Bones, Buried Treasures and Beliefs

Historical Preservation

2012-02-02T04:43:00.000-08:00

Lately there have been a lot of stories and articles about historical sites around the world that are being built over to make way for new building or other structures. The biggest one that I've come across (Thanks to Confessions of a Pagan Soccer Mom) is the Aphrodite Temple in Greece. This temple is set to be entombed to make way for an apartment building. This Temple is from the 6th century, is full of so much history and culture and yet the government is covering it up. As an anthropologist this is sickening.

In the United States we have legislation that is set down to prevent these types of things from happening. The main one is the Historic Preservation Act of 1966 which subsection b(2) reads: "The historical and cultural foundations of the Nation should be preserved as a living part of our community life and development in order to give a sense of orientation to the American people."

This then prevents anybody from building something over a historical site. The problem with this is then deciding where there is a historical site. That is why in the United States whenever anyone builds anything (buildings, roads, etc) they have to have an archaeological survey done on the land. Back in 2009 I worked for an archaeology lab who did just this. We would go out to sites where a road was being built or a new office building was going to be built and we would conduct a survey.

We would start with a Phase I survey which would entail doing research on the area to see what the history is behind it and going out to the property and mapping out any potential areas. If there were potential areas then we would mark them on the map and move onto a Phase II survey. During the Phase II survey we would dig Shovel Test Pits (STPs) every 30 meters or so depending on the area and see if we could dig up any artifacts. Then if we found anything that would be indicative of a historic site or historic significance we would move on to a full excavation (Phase III and Phase IV). From there the proper paperwork would be filed to make sure that it was a historic site and that no one could build over it in the future.

Of course there are some flaws to this system like every other system and some sites are covered up or sometimes destroyed. Still nothing compared to the seemingly non-existent laws in some of these other countries such as Greece. Now not to get all preachy and everything but I think there's something that needs to be done about this. This is culture and history that is being covered up and destroyed. Just think, do you want our present to be preserved in the future? Or do you want an apartment building built over it. That's why I believe that legislation like the Historic Preservation Act should be put forth in other countries around the world.

Works Cited:

"6th Century Temple to Aphrodite to be buried to make way for Apartment Building" Pagan Newswire Collective. http://pncminnesota.wordpress.com/2012/02/01/6th-century-temple-to-aphrodite-to-be-buried-to-make-way-for-apartment-building/

"Historic Preservation Act of 1966" http://www.nps.gov/history/local-law/nhpa1966.htm

Image of Fieldwork at Bronze Age Site of Phylakopi, Melos, Greece courtesy of http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/classics/archaeology/under.shtml

American History X

2012-01-09T05:42:00.000-08:00

So in my last post I was talking about the Anthropology behind Idiocracy and how it was such a great movie that got very little credit. It is one of those movies that I think everyone should watch. There are few movies that I believe that everyone should watch but on the top of my list is American History X.

For those of you who don't know what the movie is about I will briefly summarize it for you. The story centers around two brothers who are both involved with a Neo-Nazi gang in Venice Beach. The movie starts with the older brother Derrick getting out of jail for the murder of two black gang bangers. At the same time his brother is getting out of jail, the younger brother Danny is forced to write a paper about his brother's influence on him as a punishment.

The movie then unfolds as part of the paper that Danny is writing. It goes through how Derrick and Danny both became skin heads, what Derrick did to land himself in jail, what their family went through as they both took the plunge into the Neo-Nazi world and what they both participated in as part of this gang. This is all done through series of black and white flashbacks that goes out of order at times but then it all becomes clear at the end why some scenes were shown before others.

Throughout this movie the viewer gets thrusted into the world of the Neo-Nazi skinhead gangs and at times it is hard to watch some of the events that unfold. It goes into the reason behind these kids and their need to be in this type of gang. It delves into the mind of the skinheads (especially Danny and Derrick) and shows just how skewed their ideas really are.

The whole movie is really driven by both Edward Norton as Derrick and Edward Furlong as Danny. Both of these actors are phenomenal and my favorite scenes are the ones where Derrick goes on these long rants about how he views society. Edward Norton is so beyond amazing in this role and did such a great job at embodying the role of Derrick.

Now this movie is not for those who are overly sensitive. There is A LOT of cursing, racial slurs, nudity and gory scenes that are at time hard to watch but all of it serves the purpose of showing just how horrible this subculture really is. When I first saw this movie (when I was 12 and probably should not have been watching it) I was fascinated by the skinhead world. It was so hard for me to comprehend that these people had SO much hate for people that were merrily different than them. After watching this movie I started doing more research about the Neo-Nazi skinhead movement and was both incredibly interested and disgusted with what I found.

Of course I have to bring up the anthropology in this movie which is all throughout this movie. The most poignant probably is the idea of influence that people/places/events can have over a person's outlook on life. Danny's attachment to his brother and the bond that they share is very important to this movie and how both of these characters change through the movie and their lives. Once again this is a testament to the amazing actors of both Norton and Furlong and to the amazing writing by David McKenna.

In addition the cinematography on this movie is also amazing. The mix of low angle, high angle, extreme close ups and slow motion shots make the viewer feel like they are on this journey with the characters. The lighting is also great in this movie especially the use of shadows in both the scenes in the jail and in the home.

This movie was nominated for all kinds of awards when it came out back in 1998 including an Oscar for Edward Norton for Best Actor. In my opinion Norton should have won that Oscar that year but of course I guess I am biased since Norton is one of my all time favorite actors. This movie is definitely on my top movie and I think everyone should see it at some point in their life.

Idiocracy

2011-12-12T07:44:00.000-08:00

If you have been reading my blog for awhile or know me at all you know that I tend to find Anthropology in everything. Also if you know me even a little bit you know that I love movies. So it would make sense that I would find Anthropology in movies. One of my favorite movies and example of Anthropology in movies is Idiocracy.
Idiocracy is a movie that was released in 2006 in select theaters and didn't get much buzz about it. In fact I bet hardly any of you have heard of it. It was written and directed by Mike Judge, the creator of Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill. So right off the bat you're probably thinking it's some crude movie with bathroom jokes and objectifying woman. Well yes that is true on the surface but beneath it there is so much more.
It stars Luke Wilson as a Joe, literally an average Joe, who volunteers to participate in a military experiment that involves a hibernation process. Joe and a former prostitute go into hibernation but then the military forgets about them. They wake up 500 years into the future to find a world where everything has become insanely dumbed down. In this strange future Joe and the prostitute Rita have become the smartest people in the future and because of this draw major attention to themselves.
The movie continues with them getting arrested at one point, meeting a bunch of people along the way (and learning just how stupid America has become) all in search of trying to find a machine to take them back to their time. Now I won't ruin the movie for you because I want you to go out and see it but I do want to at least highlight some of the Anthropological topics in it.
First we have the concept that America is getting stupider and stupider. At the beginning of the movie the narrator starts talking about how the "dumb" people in society are procreating more and thus raising their children to be just as dumb and creating this huge chain and population growth. There is something to this logic I think to a certain degree.
The movie also addresses advertisement and the media and just how influential they become. In the movie everything is sponsored by something and people seem to do nothing but sit in front of the TV watching mindless shows about people getting injured. It goes into the concept of circular thinking and why people believe everything they hear. All in all it shows what path we may be on if we don't stop with the laziness.
This movie has a great theme behind it and the concept it phenomenal. Like I said it is a Mike Judge production so it does have its crude moment but if you don't mind that the core of the movie is great. If you want to learn more about it visit the IMDB page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/

The Devolution of the Holidays

2011-12-03T16:32:00.001-08:00

Yeah, yeah I know I haven't blogged in awhile but things have been super crazy lately! Work has been insane, the museum is getting ready to display a new exhibit and I'm in the process of moving into a new apartment. So yeah when it comes to having free time there isn't much to be had. When there is some to be had though I tend to want to veg out in front of the TV or go to the gym. Anyways that's not the topic of this blog post.

I'm sitting here at my boyfriend's as he's sick in bed and it's given me the free time to actually think and to write this blog post. See I started thinking about the Holidays. First off I was thinking how I haven't gotten any presents for hardly anyone yet and how much that is stressing me out. Then I started to think of how things were when I was little versus now.

When I was younger I remember having this amazing Thanksgiving dinner sitting around the table with family as we talked about how thankful we were for everything. Now it has devolved to us sitting around watching football and eating the meal before rushing off to all the other places that we will be going to. And this isn't just my family. There are a good majority of families who do this as well.

Then there is the issue of the stores. It used to be that hardly any stores were open on this day and now more and more are opened for at least a little bit. This then causes many of the employees there to have to work when they would be with their families instead. This year the big thing was the stores being closed during the day on Thanksgiving but then opening up at Midnight for the Black Friday sales. This then meant that people were rushing around from their family events to get there early (cause for Black Friday of course there was major set up involved) so that they could work insane hours to satisfy the consumers.

Christmas and the other Holidays have become the same way. Many of the big stores are open on or around Christmas. True they get their employees who don't celebrate the particular holiday at the time to work, but still people who do celebrate end up working as well. I remember on Christmas the only thing that was open was a small Deli near my house that was run by a Jewish family. I remember going there to get sandwiches (and my parents alcohol to take to the different parties we were going to) and that was the only place open around for miles.

Also what goes along with that is this constant need to keep pushing the holiday sales longer and longer. We saw it with Black Friday and the stores opening up earlier than usual but even before that we saw tons of Christmas decorations in the stores. Some stores started selling Christmas items right after Halloween. (and I won't even get started to how they seem to only cater to the Christmas season, that is a whole other issue in itself).

Then there's the decorating for Christmas itself. I remember my mom putting on our Bing Crosby Christmas album as we decorated with tinsel and small figurines around the house. We used to drive around looking for the perfect Christmas tree to fit in our house (my dad and brother always wanted the huge ones). Now we're lucky if we put a couple decorations up and we now have a fake tree. And once again this isn't just my family that does this.

What it boils down to is the big corporations wanting to capitalize on the Holidays and then Americans have circum to it. Also it seems that this devolution is a lot on the fault of the laziness of Americans. We want everything to be easy and convenient. Well sometimes they just can't be like that. I hope when I have a family that I never circum to "what is the easiest" solution when it comes to the Holidays or perhaps things in general.

I’m Still Here...

2011-10-21T07:38:00.000-07:00

Yeah I know it’s been awhile since I last wrote a post but lately my life has been extremely busy but in a good way. I’ve been working like a maniac at my job as well as volunteering at the museum on both the Exhibits and Collections committee. On top of that I’m in the process of getting my book published and I have three publishers that are interested in it. Also my boyfriend has been teaching me how to play racquetball so I’ve been attempting to practice and get good at that (which has been interesting to say the least).

Needless to say my blogging has fallen to the wayside. This saddens me since my writing is my first passion in life. This though leads me to the second passion in my life that I recently had an epiphany about thus leading to me figuring out exactly what I want to do with my life. See my second passion is Museums Exhibits. I love taking research and ideas, putting them together and designing an exhibit so that everyone can share in the experience. THAT is what I want to be doing with my life. This epiphany came when I was with my boyfriend and friend in DC this past weekend. We wandered around a bunch of museums and I realized I wanted to be the one who’s name was on the exhibits.

So then the question is how do I get there? If you all have been following my life for the past year you will know that I have applied for at least 25 jobs at the Smithsonian and another 15 at other museums around the country. No dice obviously, so I landed my current job at a Government Contractor specializing in IT. Originally upon working for them I had seen the opportunity to go into the GIS field and promptly applied for the Master’s program at the University of Maryland. I then continued in my job which is mostly HR and Administrative Management and I was happy.

Then I started dating my current boyfriend and I saw him going through the same process that I did applying for jobs. He was ready, like I was, to take any job that wasn’t necessary in his field because well it was a job. Though he didn’t have to as he started to get interviews and talk to people in his field. He was pursuing his dreams and I’ll admit I was jealous. Here I was with a great job that’s in a great location, great pay, great people… but it wasn’t what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I felt like I was stuck that I wasn’t going anywhere.

That’s when I decided to take matters into my own hands and pursue my dream. This involved applying for my Masters in Museum Studies from John Hopkins University. The program is everything that I have ever wanted, including a two week stint working on a project at one of the Smithsonian Museums in DC. So yeah I’m pursuing my dreams now. Still working for my current company because I really do enjoy my job but now I feel like I’m working towards something now.

So what’s next for me? Well I will continue to work here, continue to volunteer at the museum, continue to work on my book all while waiting to hear back from John Hopkins to see if I got into the program. I finally feel like I am back on the path that I steered off of when pursuing my dreams. I also am going to try to devote more time to writing (both my blog posts and my stories) because that is my first passion in life. So thank you all for baring with me as I take this crazy journey and I promise to once again fill your heads with lots of fun anthropological knowledge!

Image Courtesy of thinkhero.com

Anthropology in the Works of Whedon: Angel

2011-08-29T11:09:00.000-07:00

Last week the post was all about Buffy the Vampire slayer and the anthropology that was behind that show. Angel happens to be a spinoff of that show and also happens to have even more anthropology in it then its predecessor. Now unlike Buffy I actually started watching Angel from the first season and all the way through to the end when it was on TV new. Though like Buffy it took me a little while to realize just how much there was behind the show.

In fact it took me until episode 6 of Season 3 (Billy) to realize just how much anthropology/philosophy and even evolution was in this show. The biggest difference between Angel and Buffy to me is that Buffy revolved around a group of teenagers who were working their way through high school (and later college) while fighting evil. Angel on the other hand was about the “real world” and how a vampire and his gang of investigators fit into that world. We see how Angel now deals with being in LA a city full of people and of course evil fiends. Angel is also a lot darker than Buffy was, both literally (since Angel can only go out at night) and figuratively.

Through the show Angel we get to see a side of him that we didn’t get in Buffy. We get to see farther into who Angel is a person and start to understand more about the darkness that he carries around with him. This then brings us to the first part of the anthropological themes in the show. As humans we have two main “drives” in us that have sparks countless movements: Redemption and Revenge. The show Angel is full of both of them.

We start with of course the obvious; Angel is cursed with a soul by gypsies and is forced to carry around the burden of remembering all the people that he tortured, raped and killed. Thus redemption comes in. He must redeem himself for all the bad things he did in the past so he turns and starts to help people thus Angel Investigations is born. Now Angel, like any other human (or well part human in his case) has the other side of that as well, the need for revenge. We see all different levels of revenge in the show from little things like him getting back at a vampire for killing a girl in an alley to the larger things like taking Revenge on Wolfram and Hart and Holtz for his sons dive into the Kortov. Angel isn’t the only one to have that revenge in him. We see it in every one of the characters from Gunn trying to avenge his sister’s death, Fred trying to get back at Professor Sidel for sending her to Pylea, Connor trying to get back at Angel for “killing” Holtz, etc.

The concepts of Revenge and Redemption then bring a very human element to the show that draws the reader in and makes them feel like the show is real. Some other concepts that Angel also touches on are Love and Loss. These again are two very human elements that even Angel being partially human has. On the flip side of that, we get re-introduced to Angelus (which we met in 2^nd season of Buffy) through both the flash backs but also when he is brought back during 4^th season. We get to see then the soulless animal that is Angelus and the anthropological/philosophical questions are raised such as: Are Angel and Angelus two different people? Is the soul purely Angel and the being purely Angelus? Which one is wearing the mask in this scenario? These are all questions that have been discussed extensively among the writer and especially among the fans.

Now we come to the most anthropological part of Angel (at least in my opinion) the presence of the character of Billy. Billy first shows up in the episode “That Vision Thing” (Season 3 episode 2) as a young man banished to a hell dimension for the horrible works he has done. Angel then is blackmailed by Wolfram and Hart to break Billy out of this hell dimension. Wolfram and Hart uses Cordy as leverage to get Angel to do this and since he is who he is, breaks the kid out with no hesitation. For the next couple episodes we don’t hear anything from Billy but there is a lingering that he is going to pop back up and cause mayhem. And that he does, tenfold.

See Billy has this special “power;” he touches a man and that man then goes ape-shit on any women in the vicinity. This then leads to the question if he is actually using his powers to do something to these men or if he is bringing out some kind of “primordial misogyny” within them. This then leads to the whole idea of evolution and whether or not mean always had this “primordial misogyny” in them and they either evolved out of it or if it just laid dormant in them. Either way it is something primal that is being brought out of these men that they have an instinct to attack the women who should be subservient to them in their eyes.

What is interesting about these two ideas is that the different charcaters have different ideas. Angel explains to Cordy why the touch didn’t affect him because of the fact that he is in fact a vampire, thus his humanity and subsequent misogyny isn’t there. On the flipside at the end Fred talks to Wes who is convinced it was something inside of him though Fred assures him that it was “Something that was done to [him].” So once again we have those two separate ideas of what really triggered it.

Those were just some examples of the Anthropology of Angel, I could go on and on but there is only so much that you guys will want to read on my blog. For more of the in depth study of Angel join us tonight for the Season 1, episode 1 watch and tweet on twitter. Make sure you are following @whedony and using the #whedony hashtag. See you there!

Anthropology in the Works of Whedon: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

2011-08-15T12:48:00.000-07:00

In a time where what passes for good television is housemates getting drunk and hitting on anything that moves, High Schoolers randomly breaking into song, countless contests of singing and dancing, and overly romantic vampire dramas it is hard to remember that there are actually shows out there that have depth. There are very few shows over the years that I actually love to the point where I could watch them over and over and talk about for hours. As it turns out that majority of those shows (well really all but two) were created by Joss Whedon who is my eyes is a god.

So what is it about Whedon’s shows that appeal to me so much? Well you could probably guess that they all have anthropological and philosophical themes that run through them. It is true that perhaps I over analyze things but in some cases it is impossible not to see these themes in his shows. They are all at their core about humanity (and in some cases lack thereof) and what that concept means. All of Whedon’s shows really ask that question: What does it mean to be a person and what makes a person the way they are? Whedon takes us through twists and turns, into areas of white, grey and the blackest black, and ultimately makes us question the humanity in ourselves.

My love affair with the works of Whedon started, like many, when I was younger and started watching Buffy. Now when Buffy actually first aired I was six so I really didn’t start watching it when it was new until 3^rd season when I was older. Though even from a young age I realized that there was something more to this show than just a teenage girl running around killing vampires (even though of course that was badass). Of course it wasn’t until much later that I really started going back to watch the episodes carefully to understand what they really about (and listened to the commentary to help me get into Joss’ mind more).

Buffy I believe appeals to the youth in all of us. Here was this high school that was situated on a hell mouth where all kind of things that go bump in the night manage to find their way to. So we take this concept of high school and it actually becomes “Hell” emulating what many of us experienced when were in school. There also is the concept of closeness and family and what that really means. There is this running theme that family goes deeper than just blood as we see with Buffy’s gang endearingly called “The Scoobies.”

As the show Buffy progresses there are many instances of love, loss, heartbreak, death and everything in between. As Buffy grows and learns more about who she is as the Slayer the show actually grows with her and at some points even plunges into that black with grey along the way. It grows beyond a teenage “coming of age” show into a study of what happens once you enter into the real world when the real world is full of evil supernatural fiends.

Also like with any show about vampires there’s this idea of souls and what exactly a soul is. Obviously vampires are soulless killing machines but then we have Angel (and later Spike) who are vampires that are re insouled and thus feel all the horrible deeds they’ve done in the past. Despite the obvious we also have other characters that have souls but still find themselves in those shades of grey and in the case of Willow even black.

This idea of souls leads into a much deeper discussion that actually tonight is being discussed at the weekly “Whedony” discussion on twitter at 9pm ET. If you all would like to join in I will be hosting it. Follow @whedony on twitter and use the hashtag #whedony with your responses so that they will be searchable. Also the next couple of blog posts will be on the other whedony shows which will also be discussed at tonight’s Whedony. The next post will be an overview on Angel which is a spinoff off of Buffy.

Image Courtesy of Warner Bros

Anthropology of Shark Week

2011-08-05T12:11:00.000-07:00

Yes you heard me correctly; this post is in fact about Shark Week. You may be wondering why exactly I’m talking about sharks when Anthropology is the study of people but bear with me you’ll get it in a second. This past week was in fact shark week and in case I forgot all I had to do was stick my head out of the window of my office and look down the block to see the giant shark busting out of the Discovery Channel building.

So why is Shark week so huge (literally and figuratively)? I mean this week I couldn’t go on twitter or facebook without coming across posting about shark week. Many people across the country were glued to their couches as they watched hours upon hours of shark shows. So why are sharks so enthralling? I mean we don’t see Discovery featuring a “Tiger Week” or an “Elephant Week.” No it’s specifically sharks that people are devoting their weeks to. What is it about these creatures that draw people in? Well think about it a predator that lurks beneath the ocean just waiting for prey as then suddenly they attack.

Heck why do you think the movie Jaws did so well? The shark isn’t just an ordinary fish; it’s a symbol of mystery and intrigue. Even now with shark shows and scientists working to find out more and more about sharks they remain pretty elusive. It isn’t like other animals that can be plucked from the wild and studied they are hard to catch and hard to study. This being said it is interesting also to note that sharks have been around for thousands upon millions of years (depending on which scientists you talk to). They have survived this long without much evolution because they’re perfectly engineered for what they do.

There are many cultures around the world that both greatly fear and worship the shark. Many Polynesians worship the shark-god and place offerings in the ocean for him. So what about the shark makes it so magnificent and in some cases divine? Well we then go back to the shark being elusive and mysterious. As a society we mostly have a fear of the unknown and the shark swimming around in the water below you unnoticed ready to attack at any time is the ultimate unknown. Thus like many things in our society that we fear we have to showcase it.

How better to showcase it then to create an entire week dedicated to shows that share more knowledge about sharks, sharks and more sharks. The stories of survival, of attack, of mystery are all so thrilling to us and the fact that they are all about sharks is thrilling to us. They are beautiful majestic creatures that are also one of the deadliest on earth. It’s that paradox that will continue to entertain the masses for decades to come.

Audits, Atavism and Affinity

2011-07-29T07:34:00.000-07:00

Yes, yes I know again with the alliterations, but hey I’m a sucker for a good literary device (used correctly of course). These words though as dissimilar as they may seem all serve purpose in this blog post; one leads to the other. It all started with the first word in the title: Audit. Now you’re probably thinking why the hell is an anthropologist talking about audits, especially this anthropologist who never took one business class in her life? Well first off, good question and second this was the starting point to this whole saga that has been on my brain lately. I will then start at the beginning.
It is important to note first of all that I work for a government contracting firm and per working with the Government we have to be ISO certified. To be ISO certified you have to go through this long audit process. So for the past month my supervisor and I have been scrambling to get all of our contracts, strategies, org charts, HR files, accounting manuals, etc all ready for the audit. All of this was leading up to Wednesday when the auditor came in. He was very friendly and he immediately warmed up to all of us but perhaps a little too much. He wouldn’t stop talking. A total of 9 hours he was there and I’d say for about 5 hours of that he was just shooting the breeze about any topic under the sun.
Now don’t get me wrong, any of you who know me know that I love talking with anyone about pretty much anything. So you know if I say that this guy talked too much that he TALKED TOO MUCH! Intermingled with all the chatting about who the Redskins were trading, the debt ceiling and his daughter going off to college we actually got some anthropological topics in. We started to talk about technology and how technology was seemingly taking over the world. Now of course I engaged him in this conversation for a bit before stating “Well I could go on about this forever but let’s get back to business.” We then got some business done but of course he was back to talking about the new Chevy he bought and government subsidies.
You get the point then, he talked a lot and it was perhaps one of the longest times I’ve ever just sat in a conference room. The funny part is though that he found his way into my blog even with being an irritation. The talk about technology got me thinking about a blog post I wrote back in March called Anthropological Perspective on the Media in which I talk about how as a society we are so reliant on technology for everything that if we were to have some large nuclear event that wiped out all the computers in the world there would be no imprint of us. Of course I brought up this idea when talking to the auditor and he whole heartedly agreed with me.
Technology has been both our curse and are gift. Information can now be found so fast, you can communicate with people in ways you could never before and records can be kept more easily. On the flipside books are starting to become obsolete (which as a writer really saddens me), newspapers and other news sources aside from websites are becoming less popular and people are communicating more but actually interacting less. The latter part then brings me to the next word: Atavism.
Now for those of you who don’t know, atavism is another word for regression. With technology we are regressing as a species even though as a society we seem to be progressing. My go to example for this phenomenon happens to come from a movie which I actually don’t like very much as a movie, but as an anthropological study is ingenious. I’m talking of course about 2001: A Space Odyssey. The whole concept of this movie is evolution both of man and of technology. The movie starts out with a bunch of apes circling around this monolith that shows up. The apes are confused grunting at each other and trying to communicate what is going on but it is hard since they have yet to develop actually speech.
Then the movie fast forwards to 2001 (which for a movie that was made in 1968 is the distant future) where technology has overtaken man and it becomes a race between man and computer to obtain this very same monolith that now is on the moon. In the process man has become cut off from other men due to the computers. This movie then shows a regression back to the days where men were still apes trying to grunt to speak with each other but instead of speech being the issue technology is. This of course leads us to the last word: Affinity.
What is affinity you ask? Put simply it is connection between two or more individuals; connection that we are now losing because of technology. Now with texting, emailing, facebook, twitter and all the other social media devices we don’t ever have to actually see a person to correspond with them. In fact I have been equally guilty of this as anyone. Last summer I lived with my roommate in a two bedroom apartment and there were many a times that we would text the other to see if they were awake, wanted food, wanted to go out, etc. We could’ve just as easily gotten up and walked the five feet to the other’s room. Technology has made us impersonal.
There is however another side to this affinity. Technology has actually helped us connect more in some cases than we ever could before with people we would never meet if it wasn’t for that. The greatest example is twitter (since you all know that I am a twitter addict). For me twitter is a place that I have met tons of people who live all around the world that have my same interests. These are people who I would’ve never had the chance to meet before twitter and other social media. Even this very blog couldn’t be produced without the aid of technology.
So am I telling you to get rid of all technology? No of course not, gods know I couldn’t survive without it. What I’m hoping is that this will make you think about it more and use other avenues than strictly technological ones to communicate, gather information, read, etc. There needs to be a balance like in everything else, balance that the auditor was severely lacking the other day. Now we have come full circle in this little saga here which as you know always continues and will never reach a stopping point just as technological advances will also.

Image from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick

What’s in a Name?

2011-07-27T05:27:00.000-07:00

In a time where celebrities name their children after characters from the Jungle Book and fruit it is sometimes hard to remember what the purpose of one’s name exactly is. Has anyone ever asked you: “What does your name mean?” And how many of you can actually answer that question? I was thinking about it and I haven’t really heard anyone ask that in a while. So it got me thinking, how are people naming their kids now, specifically in our American culture? Are they looking at menus, referencing pop culture, or are they going to the route of words?
This issue I’m going to tackle while wearing two hats. The first one will be my writing hat and the second will be the normal anthropology hat (which I always envision as Indiana Jones’ hat). As a writer all the characters in my stories/novels have names that always mean something; there is not one character whose name is an accident. For example in the story I just wrote the mob boss’ name is Damian Brent. Damian means “to kill” and Brent means “branded” in Old English thus showing you what kind of person he’s going to be upon hearing his name. In the same aspect my main character goes by her nickname Clover which means “luck and prosperity.” It is also interesting to note that I never reveal her real name first or last and there is also a purpose to that as well.
That then leads to my next point about names; names can hold all the power over a person. To know someone’s name is to know a part of them. Think about when you’re having a conversation with someone; if you mention their name every so often during the exchange you can captivate that person more. We then come to the greatest example (in my opinion) of the power of names. Now of course if you know me, you knew this was coming but my example happens to be from the Joss Whedon show Angel. The prime example is the character of “Jasmine” who was named after a flower but that’s not her real name; in fact no one knows her real name. This again has a purpose because once you have the name you have the power.
So here’s a little background for those of you (shame on you) who don’t watch Angel or haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Jasmine. Jasmine comes about at the end of season 4 of Angel and she is supposed to be this ultimate evil. Instead she looks like an “ebony goddess” and she brings what appears to be peace on earth. Of course though there’s a catch; she’s eating people to keep her powers thus keeping this trance like state that has everyone seeing her as this beautiful goddess and also seeing the beauty in everyone else. This trance though is broken when Angel and the gang learn the truth and sees her true hideous face. Angel then journey’s to another world to find a way to break this trance. He then learns that Jasmine does in fact have a “real name” but that there is only one being that knows it. This then leads credence the fact that she is keeping it hidden so that her power is kept. Angel though of course finds this being kills it, brings it back, slices the mouth open and the name is revealed. The trance is then lifted and everyone sees her for who she really is. Thus her name is the thing that sets her apart from everyone else.
There are plenty of other examples of this in other shows, movies and literature. Think about in Harry Potter how no one wants to say the name Voldemort, instead they all call him “You Know Who.” This calling him by something that is only whispered about gives him all the power. This then can also be applied to reality and even modern days. How about titles of power? The Queen, the King, Mr. President, Czar, etc are all titles that one uses to address people in their positions. Very seldom would you address them by their first name because that would strip away some of their power, their allure.
Now that we know power and names are connected let’s circle back around and revisit the concept of the origin of names. The best example I think comes from the Native Americans who all name their children after things in nature. Many Native Americans believe that what you are named after shows what sort of person you are going to be. Likewise in ancient times in Europe, Near East and Asia you were named after qualities that your parents wanted you to have. For example someone in Scotland would name their son Duncan which means “brown warrior” in hopes that he would grow up to be a great warrior and fighter (which is no coincidence why the main character in The Highlander TV series is named Duncan).
So what does your name mean? Does it reflect who you are? My name Samantha actually has two meanings. The first part “Sam” is derived from the Hebrew male name of Samuel and it means “God heard.” The second part “antha” is derived from Greek which means “flower.” So apparently I’m a flower that God hears. My middle name, Eileen, is Gaelic meaning “light.” My mom gave me these names because she had always wanted a very girly girl who was full of light and flowery I guess. Funny though how I know go by Sam and am pretty much the opposite of how she thought I would turn out. This shows that every intention is not always the result. But regardless she put thought into naming me because she wanted it to reflect who I was (or rather who she thought I would be). Also she wanted her maiden name of “Sampson” to live on through the generation so my name is homage to the Sampson clan. These are all things I believe are lacking in modern American culture.
Hopefully all this insight will persuade you to really think about your name and what it means as well as other people’s names around you. I always make a point when I’m meeting people face to face for the first time to ask their name, ask what their name means and then see if I get that impression of their name from them. On the flipside of that it is sometimes very interesting to observe a person in their environment and then try to think of what their name might be. Maybe that’s just the anthropologist in me that loves that, but try it one day it’s very intriguing.

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Gender Roles in Ancient Societies

2011-07-18T07:39:00.000-07:00

When most people think of the ancient societies when it comes to gender roles they think back to women giving birth to children, raising those children, preparing all the meals, tending to the housework and being all around subordinate the male of the household. This however isn’t true for every society in the ancient world. In fact there are plenty of societies that were matriarchal and where woman dominated the household. Likewise there were societies where men and women shared responsibilities equally.
Let’s start with the “Viking Age.” The men of this age were always painted in the light of being extremely masculine, full of brute force and strength. There have been countless tales of Vikings descending on a town, overtaking it and making it a colony of their own. There is also much evidence that they took the women from those towns and made them their own brides (Jesch 1991).
Now women couldn’t actually be Vikings since the Norse word vikingar applies strictly to men. The women did play a very large role in the Scandinavian towns (in Norway, Finland and Sweden) as well, if not more in the Scandinavian colonies (Faroe, Iceland, Greenland). While the Viking men were away or dead (since women were windowed quite often do to the warring nature of the Viking men) the woman ran the towns. They took care of the farming and trading within the village or town. There is even evidence of women entering into the world of commerce. Excavation of multiple Scandinavian graves of woman yielded merchant’s scales and weights. A parallel can then be drawn between these roles of women in this age to women in America who took care of the work while the men were at war (Jesch 1991).
It is interesting to point out that many societies didn’t publicize their gender roles very well (thus leading to very little about it in historical literature) most of the information gathered is at burial sites. This is evident in the Viking Age as I mentioned above as well as many other parts of the world. Perhaps the best example of this is the Mayan culture.
There were actually a handful of Mayan societies that were matrilineal the foremost being Tonina. Tonina was a city which became matrilineal after the death of the powerful leader Lady K’awil. She is proof that women were involved in politics in ancient Mesoamerica when she assumed the mantle of power after the failure of two male leaders. Lady K'awil's reign is documented by murals which depict her seated on a throne with captives at her feet. More evidence of her power was buried along with her in her tomb (Bell 2002).
What is also interesting about the Mayans was that their supreme deity was the Moon Goddess which is very different from a lot of other societies at the time whose supreme deities were usually male. The Moon Goddess is depicted in murals and other forms of art. However, these were not the only forms of art for the ancient Maya. Textiles were an important aspect of ancient Mayan life that was produced by women. Woman also played a big role in the religious aspect of the culture. While boys were being trained to hunt, the girls were taught how to prepare the religious shrines (Bell 2002).
Also it is interesting that the concept of gender in ancient Maya art is ambiguous; it is difficult to identify the gender of some figures simply because one couldn’t survive without the other. Specifically images of heir recognition, “this duality is explicit: there is a male figure on one side of the newly-anointed, and a female figure on the other side” (Bell 2002).
Even though there is a sense of duality and equality in the society there is also a lot of evidence that women were considered the superior. This is due to childbirth which as for mentioned in my last post is something that only woman are biologically capable of. This then makes the argument the gender roles in some societies are based on the physical aspect of the “sex” of the person.
The mythology and power associated with the ability to create life was one which men tried to emulate. Men would participate in the act of bloodletting their own genitals to create something new from their blood. Instead of giving birth to life they would give birth to new eras through this symbolic gesture of menstruation. This was a ritualized act using the skin were stingray spines, obsidian blades, or other sharp object to pierce the skin. The blood was allowed to drip on cloth, which was then burned (Gustafson 2002).
We can then draw the conclusion that not every society was male dominated in the ancient world though it is safe to say the majority of them were. When looking back at Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, Asian countries, etc. the women were for the most part subordinate towards the males thus drawing up the gender roles that many societies used in the past and still used today.

References:
Women in the Viking Age by Judith Jesch (Woodbridge, Boydell, 1991).

Bell, E. E. “Engendering a Dynasty: A Royal Woman in the Margarita Tomb, Copan.” In Ancient Maya Women. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press, 2002

Gustafson, L. S. “Mother/Father Kings.” In Ancient Maya Gender Identity and Relations. Westport: Bergin & Garvey, 2002

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What is Gender?

2011-07-14T05:25:00.000-07:00

This is a question that has been on the minds of us anthropologists, biologists, sociologists, psychologists and the like since the word came about. How is it different from sex and is it the defining factor that makes a person who they are? How then go they relate to the concepts of male and female, masculine and feminine?
Let’s first start out by separating “gender” and “sex.” Sex is the physical and biological characteristics that separate both men and women. So for example: women menstruate but men don’t, women have ovaries but men have testicles, women can lactate but men can’t and men have robust (massive, thick) bone but women have more gracile (smaller, thinner) bones. Thus the terms “female” and “male” are categories of sex (World Health Organization).
Gender then is much different. Instead of being defined by the physical attributes, gender is the “socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities and attributes that a given considers appropriate for men and women” (World Health Organization). So for example: in most of the world women do more housework than men, men are more likely to hold positions of power in most countries than women, in the U.S. men make more money than women, in Viet Nam men are more likely to smoke than women and in many parts of the Near East men are allowed to drive cars but women are not. Thus “feminine” and “masculine” are categories of gender.
Already can you see some problems with figuring out just what gender is? From there though we look at the first part of what the definition of gender is: “Socially constructed roles.” So which society and which roles? Already I can poke tons of holes into the concept of gender. Does this mean that gender then is different from one society to another depending on their roles? Then we come to the next stop in this study, what are “gender roles?” Are they somethings that are mandated by societies, by individuals or is there commonality between them?
Yes I realize that there were a lot of questions there but let’s face it this whole discussion is bound to bring up tons of questions. I am here not to answer the questions but to theorize some possible answers based on studies done of different cultures. So gender roles are what? Well anthropologists have come up with this general definition which isn’t any better than the definition of gender: “A gender role is a theoretical construct in the social sciences and humanities that refers to a set of social and behavioral norms that, within a specific culture, are widely considered to be the norm” (Webster’s Dictionary).
So then once again the question becomes: what is the norm? As I stated about in the examples of gender, different cultures and societies have different norms. Some societies consider sex and gender to be the same; others consider it very different and even others don’t even recognize the concept of gender at all. It then becomes increasingly frustrating to me to think that our “roles” in societies are defined by our physical appearance. On the flipside is it not due to the physical but based solely on the cultural and social factors?
This then leads to the next part of gender: gender identity. The question then becomes what is gender identity and can one identify with a gender identity that doesn’t match up with their “sex?” Gender identity is then defined as the gender (or multiple or even lack thereof) a person self-identifies as. It is not necessarily based on a person’s sex, either real or perceived, and it is distinct from sexual orientation (which is a whole separate issue). It is then one’s internal, personal sense of being a man or a woman. So we can see that this is much different than the gender roles. The gender roles are dictated by the society while the gender identity is dictated by the person internally.
Like I mentioned above there are two “main” genders but there are many other cultures that have other genders present. For example “androgyny” (the mix of masculine and feminine traits) is considered to be a third gender and some societies have five or more genders. This then leads to the last part of gender which is “gender expression.” This then takes a mixture of sex, gender roles and gender identity and showcases the individual through external ways (haircut, behavior, clothing, body movements, etc).
So here’s the part where I tell you you’re all entitled to your own opinion about these concepts but from an anthropological perspective and from MY perspective “sex” and “gender” are two completely unrelated ideas. If I had my way the word “gender” wouldn’t exist just like I think the term “race” shouldn’t exist (which is a whole separate issue). These next couple of blog posts I will focus on different cultures around the world going back from the dawn of man to the present day. There I will show that there are many different ideas of what really “gender” is and what “gender roles” are.

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My Journey through the World of Anthropology

2011-07-07T05:27:00.000-07:00

Usually I reserve my blog for educating the masses on anthropological topics that are interesting to me, topical, important or pulled from my studies in college. Today I’m going to take the opportunity to talk a little bit about myself and where my anthropology degree has lead me to at the present moment and will lead me (hopefully) in the future.

It is first important to note that I actually did not start out as anthropology major in college (shocking I know!) but rather a forensic science major. Of course I was focused mainly on forensic anthropology, specifically the human skeleton and decomposition but heavy on the science side. Things changed drastically when I took my first cultural anthropology class. I fell completely in love with anthropology (archeology, cultural and biological aspects) and more specifically with other cultures and other culture’s objects.

I started to drift farther away from the biological side (though of course still took classes on it) and studied heavily on the archaeological side especially when it came the archaeology of cultural beliefs. Along the way I took Human Evolution classes, forensic archaeology classes, GIS classes, Primitive Warfare classes, Landscape archaeology classes, mythology classes, Russian, Mesopotamian, and Native American history classes and so on. In the process realized that I didn’t have to limit myself to one specific area of anthropology in my undergrad and strove to learn all I could about every aspect of anthropology. It’s true my focus was mainly on archaeology, specifically that of the Near East and North American Indians, but I expanded it to many other aspect.

Then came the defining moment in my anthropological studies: working at the anthropology museum. Not only did I get to handle all the amazing hominid casts, human bones, animal bones and artifacts galore but I even designed a specific exhibit as well as a whole museum section. Of course what was the subject I was given to design? Why biological anthropology of course (specifically Human Evolution for the exhibit I created)! It seemed that my undergrad came full circle and I realized a career I could take all my knowledge of anthropology and apply it to: Museum Curator/Exhibit Designer.

That was my plan for quite awhile and I had very lofty aspirations. I wanted to work for the Smithsonian, something that as a child I had always dreamed of doing, but never knew the right route to take to make it there. I spent my last semester and time after I graduated applying to every possible position in the Smithsonian that I was qualified for as well as many other Federal government museums (mostly park service). I made it to the second round for a few and even got an interview at the Smithsonian itself! I made contact after contact, but they all had the pretty much the same news to tell me. It was either “I was qualified, but someone they hired was more qualified (i.e. had a Masters degree)” or “We’re under cutbacks due to the economic downturn.” Frustration is putting it very mildly on how I felt.

Then something quite wonderful happened. I went in for an interview at Laurel History Museum and they loved me and wanted me to work in their collections department right away! The catch: it was volunteer work. But hey, it was work and it was a museum so I jumped at the chance. I quickly progressed and joined both the collections and the exhibit committees which was great but just one little snag: I wasn’t making ANY money. Still keeping the dream of the Smithsonian and other big museums alive I continued to apply but got the same results. In the meantime I wanted to keep my knowledge of anthropology fresh, while being able to combine my two passions of writing and anthropology together. Thus Bones, Buried Treasures and Beliefs was born. Once again though, it was something that I loved, but something that I made zilch off of.

Finally, I began to face the reality that I wasn’t going to get something in my field that paid right out of college. I began looked for office jobs, or what a lot of people in my field consider “selling out.” Then a new host of problems I ran into became possibly even more frustrating: I was almost too qualified for most of these jobs. Once again I guess the gods were watching out for me because something amazing happened: I found a job. This wasn’t just a normal office job either; this was a job working for a government contracting firm that has contracts with half of the federal government agencies I dreamed about working with when I was starting out in the anthropology major. Even more exciting though was when I found out that they were getting into the field of GIS. This was how I knew I was in the right place.

The GIS class I took in my undergrad was perhaps my favorite class. The ability to take maps and convert them into these databases and 3D image models was amazing to me. It combined my love for technology and my love for archaeology. Not only that but it lead me to create my proposal for the geospatial relationship of Hoodoo artifacts at Mid-Atlantic sites (which I will hopefully get to present at next year’s Mid-Atlantic Archeology Convention). I fell in love, but it fell by the wayside with my new love for museum studies. Since being at this firm though, my love for it has reawakened and even inspired me to apply to the GIS Masters Program at the University of Maryland.

So the point is no matter what area of anthropology you’re interested in you’ll get to where you need to be. You could be like me and want to study everything you can possible get your hands on. Now many people wonder why I spent so much time studying anthropology and continuing to study anthrolopology when I have an “office job” and am getting more into the technical aspect of things. I answer them with five words: I love anthropology, always will. I would never want to settle studying something that I wasn’t interested in, in order to get that “perfect, high pay” job right out of college that everyone strives for. All my action and decisions were obviously done for a reason.

Right now I have the best of all three of my worlds. I work at a steady job, getting to work with government contracts, while working to pay for my Master’s degree, I volunteer at a museum that I’m in love with and I get to continue to write my heart out (and hopefully very soon will get my first novel published). This is where I’m supposed to be right now, I know that now. If you had told me four years ago when I started college what I’d be doing now, I probably wouldn’t have believed you but now I wouldn’t change it for the world.

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Marriage in the World of Firefly

2011-07-01T06:53:00.000-07:00

So I couldn’t help myself; my post yesterday on marriage got me thinking about Firefly. Lately I feel like everything I talk about makes me think about Firefly but I digress. For those of you who have never seen on episode, or the movie Serenity well first shame on you and second this whole post will probably go over your head. So what does marriage mean in the world of Firefly where we have tons of different planets with different cultures, companions that you can pay money to show around and “play house” with and with the alliance that is breathing down the neck of most of the planets?
Weirdly enough things actually have stayed the same when it comes to all these different ideas of marriage in this futuristic universe. With the frontier land on many of the outer planets we have societies starting back up and having similar customs to societies of old such as marrying someone to pay off a debt of the family or town. An example of this is the marriage (although a sham by a devil woman played by the immensely gorgeous Christina Hendricks) of Mal and Saffron. Well really this can be shown as three different examples but we’ll start with the first one. She was supposedly given to Mal as a “gift” from the town elder. According to her story, Saffron had been waiting at the maiden house where she was to be married off to whoever came along. She talks about these awful men that her fellow maidens had been married off to and how she was lucky to get such a kind, gentle man. She also asks at one point if Mal is going to kill her because she has not pleased him, citing that others at the maiden house have been put to death for that very reason.
Of course this was all a fake, which leads me to my next example of marriage in Firefly: the sham marriage. Unfortunately Saffron not only married Mal to sell him out to people who wanted to strip Serenity but married tons of other men as well. She even marries Mal’s war buddy Monty under the guise of Bridget. Once Monty figures out who she is calls her a “devil woman” and leaves her on a desolate moon. We then learn that she also married a wealthy man named Durran who she married under the guise of Yolanda. At one point Mal even refers to her as “Yosafbridge” to accommodate all her guises. We can then liken her to all the money/power hungry women that get married purely for those reasons or even the black widow.
Then there is yet another form of marriage we can liken Mal and Saffron’s too: the drunken Vegas wedding. Mal was pretty drunk the night he “married” her and didn’t even realize that he was marrying her. That though was an example of the Triumph Settler’s wedding ritual. Mal was crowned with a wreath which represents his sovereignty, then drinks of her wine and then there was a dance with a joining of hands. All of this though never crossed Mal’s mind that this was a marriage ceremony that he went through. This then could be the equivalent to “The Hangover” type wedding.
Okay enough about that marriage (all though it is the most fascinating and complex, yet fake one) let’s move on to the other marriage: Zoë and Wash. Now if there was ever an odd marriage, it would be them but that’s the beauty of it and it works. You have Zoë who’s this beautiful, military-esque, Amazon woman and then you have Wash who is a comical, somewhat wimpy mechanic. Their marriage is lovable even though even W ash says “Not everyone gets me and Zoë at first” (Firefly 2002).
We see Zoë’s feelings about marriage come out when she is confronted by Saffron about cooking her husband dinner. Zoë looks at Saffron like she is crazy and later talks to Wash about how Saffron is subservient to Mal in every way and how a woman shouldn’t be like that. Zoë also fires back when Wash “defends her” going on about how it’s always like the man to jump in and defend a woman of Saffron’s likeness. On the flipside when Saffron is trying to seduce Wash she mentions that she felt that Zoë didn’t respect Wash to which Wash fires back his famous line “Not everyone gets me and Zoë at first.” This line like I mentioned earlier I feel sums up Zoë and Wash’s entire marriage.
We also see what both Mal and Jayne feel about marriage in wake of the appearance of Saffron. When first realizing that he’s married to her, while standing in the cargo bay, Mal starts freaking out about it thus “hurting Saffron’s” feelings in the process. Jayne then speaks up, saying that if Mal didn’t want her he would gladly take her. Later in the episode Jayne even tries to trade his favorite gun for Saffron citing “Come on Mal, I’d treat her okay…” which I think pretty much sums up Jayne’s take on what he thinks a marriage is. Mal gets annoyed with him firing back that she isn’t a piece of property to be bartered, that she is a human being thus showing part of his view on the subject.
So what have we learned from this study? Well mainly that all the types of marriages, and thoughts of marriages that we have now will probably still be around in hundreds of years to come. Things might change a little bit or even become somewhat retroactive as well. I leave you then with the words of Malcolm Reynolds: “Well, yeah, last night I was [pleased]. Had some mulled wine, pretty girl gave me a hat made out of a tree. Nobody said I was signing up to have and to hold” (Firefly 2002).

Rites of Passage: Marriage

2011-06-30T11:11:00.000-07:00

In my last post I talked all about adulthood and what the really means in a society. Between my thoughts and the comments of some other we pretty much concluded that adulthood is unique to each individual culture and society. Also it was pointed out that the “rites of passage” that I mentioned (sweet 16, getting a car, getting a job, etc) are not really “rites of passage” like the elaborate ceremonies in other cultures. The same can all be said about another rite of passage: Marriage.
Many of you know how I feel about marriage and if not think about how my journey into “finding myself” and becoming an adult has no mention of a spouse. It’s true I’m a very cynical person, but I’m talking about the concept of marriage as a whole, not love. Let’s take a step back and look at marriage in the United States first. First off we have crazy one night celebrity weddings, drunken Vegas weddings, weddings that are showcase for the parents of the bride, weddings that are broadcast nationwide and then you have the simple madly in love sharing their love with their family and friends weddings. Talk about a mismatch of ideas and practices yet the government still wants to restrict marriage (though don’t get me started on that issue…).
Now many of you might yell at me for this next part, but bear in mind that I’m looking at it from an anthropological perspective. Marrying out of love is something that has only become popular in the past couple of centuries. Marriage was, to many in ancient times, the same thing as their journey into adulthood. Girls would be married off at a young age for many different reasons and they were hardly ever love. There are many examples even in the Judeo-Christian Bible of girls being married off to satisfy their family debts. This still goes on in some societies around the world. So once again I point out that “love” and “Marriage” being intertwined is a newer concept.
So before one enters into a marriage they go through the rite of passage of the actual wedding. I happen to be one of those people who thinks the thought of parading yourself and spouse in front of hundreds of people to say “I love you” and want to spend the “rest of my life” with you (Yes they are in quotes for a reason, I’m not just quote happy) is an unnecessary measure. What I do like though is the rituals that many other cultures have that are associated with the wedding (imagine that a pagan like me who loves rituals…).
My favorite of all the wedding rituals happens to be the Russian wedding. First of all it is important to note that like in many European countries this is a multiple day event, sometimes even lasting a week. The first step in the wedding is the vykup nevesty which means “Paying of the Ransom,” and yes it is what it sounds like. The groom shows up with money or jewels to “pay” for his bride. This is all done in a very comical way even sometimes the bride hiding and him having to find her, or even a friend dressing up as the bride to fool the groom.
The next part is the actual wedding ceremony which consists of three parts: the optional traditional service, the betrothal and then the main service in either a church setting or the civil setting. During the civil ceremony, the parents give the couple two crystal glasses, which they break. The more pieces it breaks into, the more years of happiness they have. It is also customary for the married couple to release either balloons or two white doves to symbolize their love and partnership which is written in the sky for all to see. The bride also releases another balloon with her maiden name written on it, symbolizing her new life journey with her husband. After all of this the couple and their guests embark on a tour of the city where they have the opportunity to take pictures at historical landmarks.
Then comes the best part (well at least I think so): the reception. At the reception instead of toasting with champagne or wine like we do here in America, they toast with shots of vodka. The first toast is made to the newlyweds and after the first shot, the guests begin to shout Gorko, Gorko, Gorko, Gorko means “bitter.” To combat the bitterness, the couple must kiss for a long time. The second toast is made to the parents. Then the new couple dances the first dance of the night. As the night continues the guests dance, sing, play games, and make toasts (thus getting incredibly drunk). This celebration lasts several days, as the family continues to eat, drink, and celebrate. This part of marriage I could definitely get into.
The Russian example is just one in many elaborate rituals an ceremonies surrounding marriage. Once again though at its core marriage isn’t about love, religion or any of the other things it has been turned into. It is about two people entering into a partnership that they will both benefit from. Some marry out of necessity, some out of tradition and some out of love. Now we Americans marry out of love along with stupidity, drunkenness and greed.
Now let’s go back to the definition of what marriage is, which has to be broken down by cultures. There is no one umbrella definition for marriage which is why it irritated me when people use the argument “Same sex marriage is going to change the definition of marriage.” David Schwimmer, an anthropology Professor from the University of Manitoba says in the best. He talks about how in general, Western cultures consider marriage as “an exclusive and permanent bond between a man and a woman that is centrally concerned with assigning sexual rights in each of the partners and establishing parental responsibility for the children of the union” (Schwimmer 2003). Traditionally, it also organizes parents and children into domestic groups in which basic roles are distributed. Variations and changes, such as same-sexed marriages, are seen as an affront to a divinely ordained order. However, other cultures have developed very different conjugal arrangements, which suggest “that other solutions to basic human problems have worked in different social contexts and that changes in Western patterns might not necessary lead to social and moral decay” (Schwimmer 2003).
So that fuels the fire that there is no one definition of marriage. Elaborate ceremonies and rituals aside marriage is something that is so much different at its core in so many different societies. There are some anthropologists that devote their whole life to studying marriage and trying to find out just what it is.

References:

“Defining Marriage” by: Brian Schwimmer, Department of Anthropology, University of Manitoba
September 2003

Rites of Passage: Adulthood

2011-06-23T09:46:00.000-07:00

In the past couple of months a lot of things have happened to transition me firmly into “adulthood.” I got a full time job, cut my hair shorter, started paying off student loans, applied for Grad School and last night officially bought a car under my name. All these things are the staples, the milestones if you will, in the journey to becoming an adult. Or so this is what our society says.
This then got me thinking about all the societies and cultures out there, past and present. The definition of adulthood and the milestones involved with it are completely different than ours. The official definition of adulthood is “the period of time in your life after your physical growth has stopped and you are fully developed” (Webster’s Dictionary). So what it seems to come down to is a biological condition. On the other level it’s defined as the “state (and responsibilities) of a person who has attained maturity” (Webster’s Dictionary). So basically if we combine that together on an anthropological level we can determine this definition of adulthood: The period of time in your life after you are fully developed and you have taken on responsibility after attaining mental maturity.
Already we can see tons of holes in that definition. First, everyone matures physically at different rates, especially when it comes to the different sexes so how do we calculate that? Second, what exactly defines mental maturity? Lastly, what sort of responsibilities are we talking about? These questions are the ones that cause all these different staples of the journey into adulthood in different societies.
So let’s start with our society then. In American culture initial adulthood starts at puberty, thus fulfilling the biological requirement. Then you have the usual graduating from High School and going either into college, trade school, traveling around the world or right into a job. Then after any of those you journey into your “career” whatever that may be. At that point some move out of their parents’ house (some even before this) and take on the responsibility of paying for their own rent, insurance, bills, etc. Thus you have reached the pivotal point in adulthood.
Other societies are nothing like this, especially when you look at past societies. In most hunting and gathering societies adulthood was achieved at the same time biological maturity did. Boys became men around the ages 13 – 15 and jumped right into foraging for food and killing animals for sustenance, fur and other things. Girls matured usually around this same period and tended to the household of their parents or they married another man in the tribe and took to his household. In some other societies during times of war a boy would become an adult as soon as he could fight properly and in some just wield a weapon. They were then sent off to fight alongside their fellow clansman/tribesmen.
These two examples are still going on now in some parts of the world. They then would constitute the taking on of responsibilities as part of biological/mental maturation thus becoming an adult.
When we think about it, all of these things even in our own society are rites of passages. Even though I usually don’t like quoting Wikipedia I really like their definition of rite of passage: “A rite of passage is a ritual event that marks a person's progress from one status to another. It is a universal phenomenon which can show anthropologists what social hierarchies, values and beliefs are important in specific cultures.” So the journey into adulthood itself is a rite of passage and then there are various others associated with it. For example graduating from High School/College, getting a job, getting a car, etc. are all rites of passage for our society. In the other societies, taking on the responsibility of hunting, caring for the household and going off to war would be the rites of passage. Now those might not seem like the other ritual events that you think of when you think of rites of passage (wedding ceremonies, bar mitzvahs, ritual dances, etc) but at their core they are.
What it comes down to on a personal level is that my journey into adulthood started with my going through puberty, becoming a “woman” and everything, but it is still ongoing. There are many rites of passage along the way that I still have to go through. What defines these in my opinion is based on the different cultures and societies. Everyone’s is different and goes through different stages. There are anthropologists out there who spend their whole life studying these rites and delving more into this whole concept of “adulthood.” The before mentioned just happens to be my take on it so go ahead and put your own takes in, you know I love discussing things! (Pending that Blogger decides to actually let me comment on my blog).

Marcus Aurelius: Order of the Universe, and Man’s Place in that Universe.

2011-06-15T06:54:00.000-07:00

Marcus Aurelius was a great political theorist of his time and has greatly influenced the way that the world looks at politics. Marcus rings a bell in most minds as being one of the great Roman Emperors of his time. He ruled Rome from 161 BCE until his death in 180 BCE and was consider to be the last of the “Five Good Emperors” (“Marcus Aerulius web-1). He was best known to the philosophic community as being a great Stoic philosopher. Some even argue that he was the best Stoic philosopher of all times, and really stuck to the Stoic Creed with his theories (Sellars web-1).
Marcus Aurelius’ most famous work was his Meditations. The style of this book is more like a journal that Marcus during his journey through central Europe. In fact the first part of the work reads more like an autobiography, but the entries have no chronology and many theorists suspect that this was written separate from the rest of the work. The rest of the work outlines his theories, mainly regarding his Stoic philosophy (Sellars web-2).
He was greatly influenced by the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, and according to other theorists, Marcus was very familiar with Epictetus’ Discourses. In Marcus’s Meditations he even outlines some of the Stoic Creeds relating it back to political theory (Sellars 2). He mentions the three topoi (according to Epictetus). The three topoi are: desires and aversions, impulse to act and not to act and freedom from deception, hasty judgment and anything related to assents (Sellars web-3).
In this paper, I will examine how Marcus Aerulius viewed the world and man’s place in the world and how that applies to political theory. I will outline what Marcus Aerulius theories were, specifically explained in his work Meditations and explain how they apply to political theory both in his time and in the 21st century. Also in this paper I will provide critiques of other scholars in the field of political science on Marcus Aerulius’s theories.
Before we can understand more about Marcus Aerulius as a theorist and how he influenced 21st century thought, we must first examine his life. He was born Marcus Aerulius Antonius Augustus on April 26th 121 B.C. in Rome. He was taught by Emperor Hadrian, but later was taught by Emperor Antoninus in 138 AD. Marcus was studied rhetoric later in his life by Fronto but later became more interested in philosophy. Later in his life he became Emperor of Rome, and at first ruled alongside Lucius Verus in 161 AD, then by himself in 169. Because of all the attacks that went on through his rule, he was constantly moving around central Europe. During his reign, even with all the moving around he was able to establish four chairs of philosophy in Athens one for each of the four principle philosophical traditions: Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, and Epicurean (Sellars web-1).
Marcus’s life was full of so many different environments and different influences that it influenced his philosophy on life. Most of his philosophy came from the teachings of Epictetus, especially Stoic philosophy which he based his book Meditations on. The focus of Marcus throughout his work is the order of the universe and man’s place within that universe.
P.A. Brunt wrote an article titled “Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations” in which he outlines his interpretations of Marcus Aurelius’s work Mediations and how they can apply to the world. Brunt describes the first part of the work as being an autobiography of Marcus Aurelius’s life because it alludes to his personal experiences and on occasion refers to his family. Brunt also says that the purpose of this first part of the work isn’t to make his own life “a paradigm for the instruction of humanity” (Brunt 8). Thus the first part of Meditations is just Marcus Aurelius talking to himself, since it was never his purpose to create a moral treatise for the masses to read. Brunt then questions if the first part of the work should even be studied along with the rest of the book which takes a more philosophical take.
Brunt then describes the rest of the book as Marcus Aurelius’s outline of the order of the universe and the place that man finds himself in that universe. Marcus Aurelius’s first point in his work is that man should take the gifts from god over everything else, and reject tyranny. This way man remains honest, and virtuous within the world. Marcus Aurelius revels in the idea of the “Stoic” creed and the focus of the individual in society. The individual then becomes responsible for his own actions within the universe otherwise he will feel the repercussions from the order of the universe (Brunt 5).
Throughout Brunt’s article, the word courage comes up a lot when he is talking about Marcus Aurelius’s views of both the leader and the citizens. Courage was a chief idiosyncrasy that Marcus felt everyone should have some degree of. Along with courage, Marcus Aurelius thought one of the biggest problems with man is that it is too easy for him to succumb to earthly sins. Marcus was an advocate for the rejection of temptations of sensual and greedy nature, because these are the marks of tyrannical behavior (Brunt 7).
The concept of “truth-finding and truth-telling” are extremely important and Brunt points out that Marcus Aurelius uses the example of Achilles and Odysseus from Greek history to illustrate this point. Marcus takes this contrast of Achilles and Odysseus from Plato’s teachings. Achilles then is the “most straightforward and truthful of men” where Odysseus is the more typical Greek (Brunt 9).
Brunt focuses on Marcus Aurelius’s views on associates for a good part of his article. Marcus’s chief concern with the associates of rulers is that too much trust is put into them. He believed that man shouldn’t be so trusting of the ones that work under him, because we must “remember that men are but jagged and crooked instruments” (Brunt 12).
Brunt then moves off of Marcus Aurelius’s focus on man, and now takes a turn and moves to Marcus’s focus on the order of the universe and what man’s place is in it. Marcus says that man should be in devout service to the gods and then goes on to define just what “the gods” are. According to Marcus the universe, gods, kosmos, nature, are all interchangeable depending on the point of view and the culture of man. Marcus sticks with his Stoic doctrine and goes on to prove that all laws are bound by the kosmos. He says: “The kosmos consists of passive material and of a casual substance which gives it the form and is the source of every change” (Brunt 15). Marcus here is now talking about the appeal to reason that we all know today as “logos” (Brunt 15).
Brunt then comes to a conclusion about Marcus Aurelius’s philosophy when it comes to man and the universe. Brunt thinks that Marcus Aurelius had a very idealistic look when it pertained to man. It seems that Brunt feels that the ideas that Marcus had, at times contradicted themselves especially when it came to the concept of the truth versus the secrecy of the ruler. Brunt also once again questions the purpose of the autobiographical portion of the work and whether it was necessary, or if the editor who put the work together after Marcus’s death just threw it in for good measure (Brunt 18).
Like Brunt, James Ker wrote an article outlining the philosophy of Marcus’s Meditations, In Ker’s article has a more critical take on Marcus’s work, even going as so far as calling is pessimistic. He calls Marcus “a Stoic half-way to Platonism, so overawed by the brevity of human life within the infinite procession of eternity that he almost lost faith in his own existence” (Ker web-1). Ker, like Brunt, also uses the teachings of Epictetus to explain the Meditations, and how they are very Stoic in their doctrine.
Ker goes onto say not only did Marcus follow the Stoic creed, but that his work Meditations followed the three basic principles of Epictetan disciplines which correspond to the “tripartite Stoic system of logic, physics and ethics” (Ker web-1). This three tripartite system that Marcus uses in his work also correspond to the Epictetan topoi which were mentioned at the begging of the paper (desires and aversions, impulse to act and not to act and freedom from deception, hasty judgment and anything related to assents).
Ker also notices the self-address that is used in Meditations. He then points out that Marcus’ purpose in his writing “was not to invent or to compose, but to influence himself and produce an effect upon himself” (Ker web-1). So basically what Ker is implying was even thought Marcus’s aims were selfish and that he wasn’t planning on writing a moral treatise for the masses, he ended up doing so.
At the end of his article Ker praises Marcus for his philosophy, and even though his motives were selfish and pessimistic he ended up influencing the course of political theory throughout history. He says “what is personal and most distinctive about the text is its emergence from Marcus’s day-by-day attempts to actualize Stoic doctrine within a lived life-not its doctrine or even its imagery” (Ker web-2). So what Brunt regarded as day to day nonsense and unnecessary in general, Ker praises as the one thing that made Marcus’s teachings more understandable to the masses.
So despite the two author’s opinions of Marcus’s work, all can agree that its main doctrine was a Stoic one that taught where man fell in the grand scheme of things. Marcus’s basic belief system that he had still finds its place in the 21st century. He is still heralded as one of the great Emperors of his time. He has even been glorified in many books, movies, and television shows.
Perhaps the most prominent example of this was in the 2000 film Gladiator where Richard Harris played the great Emperor. On his death bed in the film Marcus muttered these words that truly show his influence on the world:
Yet you have never been there. You have not seen what it has become. I am dying, Maximus. When a man sees his end... he wants to know there was some purpose to his life. How will the world speak my name in years to come? Will I be known as the philosopher? The warrior? The tyrant...? Or will I be the emperor who gave Rome back her true self? There was once a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish... it was so fragile. And I fear that it will not survive the winter (Harris, Gladiator)
And in the end it is the philosopher in Marcus Aerulius that we remember and his philosophy that we used throughout time that still finds its place in the 21st century.
As mentioned before, Marcus spent a good bit of his work talking about how man shouldn’t succumb to earthly sins such as lust and greed. This is something that in the 21st century we still believe in and try to follow in our everyday lives. Also the concept of rejecting tyranny and the fact that tyranny comes out of succumbing to the earthly sins.
Many rulers of the 21st century have followed the ideas that were outlined in Marcus’s work. One of the most prominent is Bill Clinton who even has a copy of Meditations on his bedside table. He was asked once in an interview what was the most important book to him other than the Bible, and he replied Meditations. Clinton followed the idea that “Individuals however can endure life’s futilities through the performance of duty and the application of reason. Central Stoic doctrines include the obligation to play a role in public affairs and indifference to life’s pains and pleasures” (Coates A12). Clinton really took the idea to hear that he should get involved, obviously going so far as becoming president of the United States and using Marcus’s theories to get him there.
One of main things that Clinton likes about him was “his ability to concentrate Stoic thought into tight, pithy expressions that can be very quotable” (Coates A12). The author of this article though goes onto say that even though Marcus is very quotable his theories can only be in small doses otherwise they become repetitive and increasingly boring.
Despite this feeling that Coates has for his theories, he does call Marcus “no mere philosophical speculator: he was the sole ruler of one of the greatest political entities history has ever known, a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders is ever there was one.” (Coates A12). So we can see that whether the critics are denouncing him, calling him boring, singing his praises, or living by his creeds, Marcus Aerulius still has a strong hold on political theory today in the 21st century.
Marcus Aerulius had a lot of great theories that he outlined in his work. He had great experience with political theory from traveling around so much during his rule so he saw more than the other theorists did. His view of the world and man’s place in it was built off of other theorists, but he put his own spin on it. I agree with his concept that we answer to a higher power and to make that power happy we can’t fall prey to the earthly sins that are around us.
The only thing that was a weakness when it came to Marcus Aerulius was that he had an extremely idealistic view on the world. He wanted man to be perfect and to follow the laws that were set down by the gods strictly. He also wanted the rulers to remain incorruptible and above the rest of the citizens, thus revered by the ruler’s followers. Obviously no one is incorruptible because everyone is human and falls prey to the sins of this earth.
Marcus Aerulius was a great philosopher no matter how he is spun, he was smart, he had the background, he had the knowhow, and he had great theories. It is safe to say though that when he wrote Meditations he didn’t mean for it to be used as a doctrine for people to live their lives, which it did become over the years. It started out as a sort of self-address to point out the flaws in society and how he himself should work to correct those flaws within his own rule. His work has become so much more than that, which we can see since his doctrines are still relevant in the 21st century.
In general political theory shapes our everyday society. Without the great philosophers our government would be in shambles. Everywhere one looks in the government there are influences from political theorists. Our governmental system in general is derived from the Greek philosophers and rulers, our presidents have long quoted and used philosophic doctrines in their presidencies, and our Constitution is derived straight from the basic philosophical ideals of the greats.
Political Theory is open to interpretation. Everyone is always going to have their own take on how the government should run and the structure that it should undertake. Back when the theorists were coming up with their theories about politics a lot of them were scorned for their ideas. Some, like Machiavelli were even hung for their beliefs. This just shows how different people have different opinions and usually the opinions of the majority are the ones that take over.
The theories of the great philosophers not only influence our political system and the governing bodies’ ideals, but our everyday life. Without political theory our society would be in ruins. Forget not having our democracy that we pride ourselves on, we wouldn’t even have a presentable society. Everyday values and morals that we live by wouldn’t exist, and our society would be in ruins if we didn’t have political theory.

Works Cited
· Brunt, P.A., “Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations”, Journal of Roman Studies 64 (1974):
· Coates, Steve. "The book on Clinton's bedside table.” Wall Street Journal [New York, N.Y.] 20 Jan. 1993, Eastern edition: A12
· Gladiator. Dir Ridley Scott. Perf. Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, Richard Harris and Connie Nielsen. DreamWorks Pictures, 2000.
· “Marcus Aerulius.” Wikipedia.com. 11 March 2009. 15 March 2009 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Aerulius
· James Ker. . "The Inner Citadel. The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. "Journal of the History of Philosophy 38.1 (2000): 116-118. Research Library Core. ProQuest. 18 Mar. 2009 http://www.proquest.com/
· Sellars, John. “Marcus Aerulius.” The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.com. 2005. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 13 March 2009 http://iep.utm.edu/m/marcus.htm

Image courtesy of bbc.co.uk

Zoroastrianism (No relation to the Legend of Zorro)

2011-06-10T12:35:00.000-07:00

There are many things in life that I tend to like simply because they have incredibly cool names. The Zoroastrianism is one of them. I first learned about this religion when I took a Comparative Religions class in high school and found it fascinating. I was then reintroduced to it when I took classes that had to do with the Near East and their religions. So for all of you out there who have no clue what I’m talking about (or simply want to learn more) here is Zoroastrianism in a nut shell.
So first you should know that Zoroastrianism is extremely old. It was estimated to be started around 1500 BCE by Zarathushtra and it is based on the Avesta, ancient scriptures. It is also a monotheistic religion, which back then was something that was rare (besides of course Judaism). Zoroastrianism started as a simply spiritual expression of a group of people in Persia, (which is modern day Iran) who called themselves people of righteousness (asha). These people had enemies, a polytheist majority which they referred to as the People of the Lie (druj).
The Avesta was destroyed by Alexander the Great and was reportedly written by Zarathushtra himself. In the 13th century part of the Avestra were found and pieced back together to be read. It was written in old Iranian, and contains four main parts. The Yansa which is the oldest component containing mostly songs, the Vispred, the Yashts (hymns of praise) and the Videvdat which is a collection of purification rituals.
The image above is the symbol of Zoroastrianism called the Faravahar. It depicts a man emerging from a disk flanked by wings spread wide. It has been commonly accepted as the symbol of Zoroastrianism since the nineteenth century, when the term “Faravahar” was first applied to it. However, the Zoroastrians have been using the image for more than 2000 years. Some non-Zoroastrian Persians (Iranians) also use the symbol as a representation of national pride (About.com). Some of you Whedon fanatics (like me) might recognize that this symbol was used in the show Angel when "the Beast" was trying to blot out the sun.
In its origins, Zoroastrianism began with a single divine spirit, Ahura Mazdah who created the heavens and the earth. Gradually, six deities were named as aspects of Ahura Mazdah which were names the Amesha Spentas. As time went on, these aspects of the single god were personified in many texts, (somewhat like archangels). Like many other religions, especially Native American ones, these gods all had opposing evil spirits who they constantly fought. The leader of these evil spirits was known as Ahriman. They believe we exist in the third of four stages of existence, and that when the fourth stage arrives, Ahura Mazdah will defeat Ahriman and good will prevail.
As mentioned before the Zoroastrians believed in opposing sides, this is known as dualism and there are two kinds: Moral and Cosmic. Cosmic dualism Cosmic dualism refers to the ongoing battle between Good (Ahura Mazda) and Evil (Angra Mainyu) within the universe. It is important to understand that Angra Mainyu is not God's equal opposite, rather that Angra Mainyu is the destructive energy that opposes God's creative energy. This creative energy is called Spenta Mainyu. God created a pure world through his creative energy, which Angra Mainyu continues to attack, making it impure. Aging, sickness, famine, natural disasters, death and so on are attributed to this (BBC Religions).
Like I’ve mentioned in my previous post about the Native American Religions, cosmic dualism has these notions life and death, day and night, good and evil. These notions cannot exist without one another. Balance has to be maintained by these like many other religions also believe.
Moral dualism refers to the opposition of good and evil in the mind of mankind itself rather than in the deities. Man has the ability to choose whether he wants to go down the path of good or evil. The path of Evil leads to misery and ultimately Hell. The path of good leads to peace and everlasting happiness in Heaven (not unlike Christianity). Like with cosmic dualism, we have the opposing notions but with an emphasis on choice. This choice is crucial as it determines whether we are the helper of Ahura Mazda or the helper of Angra Mainyu. When all of mankind chooses the former over the latter, evil will finally be defeated and Paradise on earth will be realized. Modern day Zoroastrianism has a very positive outlook unlike its ancient followers. It teaches that Mankind is ultimately good and that this goodness will finally triumph over evil (BBC Religions).
Zoroastrianism had some influence on Judaism, and consequently, Christianity over the years. It was became the official religion in Persia until 650 CE when Islamic Arabs invaded Persia and many of the Zoroastrian followers fled to India. An estimated 140,000 people still practice Zoroastrianism today. Most of its followers are in India, but several remain in Iran, and even some have spread across to North America.
Now obviously that is a very summed up look at Zoroastrianism as a whole, but hopefully you get the picture. It is easy to see parallels to other religions and practices (I know shocker, me an anthropologist comparing cultural beliefs) simply because it was around before most religions and like mentioned above, influenced many religious beliefs. So what started out as just a really cool sounding religion to me, opened up my eyes to see just how similar most religions are at their core.

References:
About.com
BBC Religions
Ancient Mythologies (ancientmythologies.com)

Archaeologists Don’t Dig Dinosaurs, Doesn’t Mean We Aren’t Interested in Them

2011-06-06T05:55:00.000-07:00

I was going to make a bad joke out of that, but I should leave the jokes to the professionals. In a previous post I pointed out some common misconceptions when it comes to anthropologists and archaeologists mainly the notion that archaeologists dig up dinosaur bones and fossils. This of course is false, it is the paleontologists that dig up and study dinosaur bones and fossils. Really the main reason of this is because archaeologists strive to understand humans and cultures through physical artifacts. Dinosaurs were around way before humans existed, which of course is another misconception people have (I like to blame The Flintstones for that one).
This being said, dinosaurs are still fascinating and a lot of anthropologists and archaeologists study paleontology in their course work. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to fit paleontology classes into my course load but in other classes we touched on the existence of dinosaurs and the timeline they lived in. Especially in my Landscape Archaeology class we studied the subsequent wipe out of the dinosaurs and what caused this. So needless to say when it comes to dinosaurs and fossils I don’t know as much as many other people do.
So like I do with anything else, I have been doing research on it over the years. When I was younger at one point I wanted to be a paleontologist and like any other phase I went through I had to get my hands on everything on the subject. This meant journeying to the Natural History Museum and looking at all the exhibits, reading all the books I could and watching endless educational programs on the matter. Of course it didn’t help that at this time I was in my Christian school where we were told that dinosaur bones were put on the earth to “test us.” (Which I always laughed at and questioned which like everything else I said at my school resulted in long talks with the teachers).
Of course like any other childhood phase this one was replaced by something else (which at the time ironically I think was archaeology) and the dinosaurs fell by the wayside. Still the concept of fossilized materials and dinosaur bones always continued to fascinate me. When I got to Penn State the concept came up in anthropology and archaeology classes and in my geology classes as well. Still it fell to the wayside while I learned the difference between male and female skulls, cherts and shards, endogamy and exogamy, test shovel pits and transects and hundreds of other anthropological facts.
For awhile now my love for dinosaurs and fossils has been quelled by my love for cultures, religions, artifacts and bones. That was until I found an awesome discovery on Saturday. My father and I were driving around Laurel, MD and off Contee Road behind an Office Park we found a place called “Dinosaur Park.” Apparently this park has been around for about a year and the site was actually discovered by Smithsonian paleontologists in their study of Dinosaur migrations down the East Coast. What is fascinating is that what has now been turned into a park was the site of where they found hundreds of dinosaur bones. All of this happens to be right off of Interstate 95.
Of course the both the inner archeologist and the inner child came out in me when we pulled up and saw a huge mound where adults and children alike were poised with trowels searching for any other fossils. Unfortunately it’s only open from 12 – 4 on Saturdays and it was almost 4 so we couldn’t actually dig. I did though read all the informational plaques that they had set up that overlooked the site. Granted the information was broken down so that the populous could understand and was mostly information that I had previously known.
So you better believe the next Saturday that I have free (which in the month of June are very scarce) I’m gonna unearth some Dinosaur fossils probably alongside some 7 year olds. The funny thing about this is when it comes to attractions like this that are archaeology based I always cringe when it comes to “civilians” digging up and possibly destroying artifacts. I know when I go I’m going to be that annoying person who is going to be looking around at what everyone else is doing and making sure they’re not driving their trowels into fossils.
Of course I will give a full report to you guys when I find my rare fossils in this mound (oh you better believe I’m going to find something). Even better if anyone lives in the MD area and wants to come along, the more the merrier! Fair warning though I get way too excited about these types of things and I tend to talk people’s ears off when it comes to the history of the area (I do after all work for the Laurel History Museum). So if you’re willing to put up with my sometimes overenthusiastic anthropologist self then come and join me! Otherwise stay tuned for updates!

Photo Courtesy of the "Dinosaur Park" website http://www.pgparks.com/Things_To_Do/Nature/Dinosaur_Park.htm

Ancient Hangovers

2011-05-27T09:27:00.000-07:00

Yes you did read that title correctly. This post happens to be inspired by 1) the fact that tonight I am planning on heavily drinking to celebrate my best friend graduating from college and I just accepted a full time position at job which includes a raise (yes unfortunately this may mean less posts from me). 2) I'm going to see The Hangover Part II tomorrow morning.

I mean think about it people in Ancient times had hangovers as well and there was no greasy egg sandwiches, aspirin and other remedies we have now. So then what did they do to prevent those head splitting head aches, turning stomachs and that oh so fun roller coaster ride around the room in your mind. First let's look at the Ancient Assyrians along the Tigris river. They thought they could manage or treat their hangovers with a concoction featuring myrrh and the ground-up beaks of birds. Like every other human effort on the market, the research just doesn't support this one (Bonader 2011).

The Mongolians were another group that had a very strange hangover remedy: Pickled Sheep Eyes. Honestly I'd rather have the feeling of a hangover than injesting sheep eyes (well then again I'm also a vegetarian lol). Possibly even weirder, Europeans in the Middle Ages would chew on raw eel with some bitter almonds (http://www.drinkember.com/general/ancient-hangover-remedies%E2%80%A6/).

A little less weird remedies by the Egyptians was eating boiled cabbage, Ancient Libyans; a mixture of seawater and wine, Ancient Romans; fried canary and Australia; T-bone steak, chocolate milkshake. Of course we could always go with the Germans, Irish, Scottish and many other cultures that claimed the best was the "hair of the dog" (http://www.misscharming.com/bartender/hangovertips.htm).

It wasn't only the Ancients that had very weird conncotions. Even the "Wild West" had some nuitty ones. Not only did the guys back then rule over a scary lawless land, they drank tea made from rabbit droppings in order to alleviate their hangovers. Once again I think I'd rather have the hangover rather than drinking rabit droppings. Ewww.

References:

"5 Things You Didn't Know About Hangovers" By Ross Bonander
Published May 27, 2011 Askmen.comRead

http://www.drinkember.com/general/ancient-hangover-remedies%E2%80%A6/

http://www.misscharming.com/bartender/hangovertips.htm

The Ongoing Struggle to Correct

2011-05-18T08:55:00.000-07:00

For those who know me, know I find the need to correct people a lot when they are misinformed (mostly when it comes to anthropological topics). Sometimes this means writing into Jeopardy to notify them that the answer to “What Specimen was found in Skhul cave at the Mount Caramel site?” was not Neanderthal as the contestant answered but instead the more specific Cro-Magnon specimen. Needless to say though I never did get an email back in regards to that correction, but you get my point; I like to make sure that the correct information is being distributed to the masses properly.
That being said there are a couple of things that as of late have really driven me to the point where I just want to scream to everyone how I feel on the subjects. That though is less effective than writing a blog post, so here I am. Now my corrections aren’t always limited to the anthropology field English is another subject that I feel the need to correct people on. The other day a friend (yes you know who you are) constantly kept switching around “good” and “well” using them both improperly. Of course I had to correct them multiple times but now I think they understand the concept. Then there are the people on twitter, facebook, blogs and texts who incessantly mix up words. Among the top: using “you’re” and “your” interchangeably, using “then” instead of “than” and vice versa, “to” instead of “too,” and then the all-around misspelling of things.
Don’t get me wrong, I make these mistakes sometimes too, especially when quickly typing a tweet or updating a facebook status on my phone. That is one thing but the fact is the majority of the populous that use these social networking sites really don’t know the difference. Anyways I digress since the main reason for this post is to address anthropological mistakes.
So the one I mentioned above in regards to the jeopardy question is really just semantics and people can argue about that until the cows come home (which sometimes is actually quite fun). What isn’t semantics is the fact that so many people have these wrong notions out there when it comes to the information surrounding evolution and the “dawn of man.” Most of these misconceptions have been driven by popular culture and the media around us. So let’s address some of these shall we?
First off one related misconception is that archaeologists dig up dinosaur fossils. False. Paleontologists dig up prehistoric fossils, archaeologists dig up artifacts and paleoanthropologists/paleoarchaeologists dig up bones. This is not to say that during a dig of any sort that there isn’t presence of specimens outside of the field of study. If that was the case however an expert would be called in to evaluate those particular findings. There is a big joke among archaeologists (which have been made into many a bumper sticker and T-shirt) that “we don’t dig dinosaurs, though if we could get a permit we’d try.”
Now that that’s out of the way we can address yet another issue. Men and Dinosaurs never coexisted. Forget everything you saw on the Flintstone’s, Land of the Lost, Jurassic Park and other popular TV shows/movies that portray “cave men” running around chasing dinosaurs. This just wasn’t the case. Dinosaurs were long extinct when man finally made their way onto the food chain. This then completely nullifies the creationist theory that dinosaurs were wiped out by the great flood. This also argues the case for the earth being 6.4 million years old.
The next bunch of misconceptions all surrounds the subject of Neanderthals. Now when most people think of Neanderthals they immediately picture the bent over, club swinging, hairy, grunting “cave man.” This has been once again a product of television, artwork, movies and the media. First off the Neanderthals and Homo sapiens at one point did coexist. There was no sudden wipe out of Neanderthals and then a bunch of Homo sapiens showed up. Also Homo sapiens are not decedents of the Neanderthals. I won’t get into a long drawn out explanation but the Neanderthals were on a different branch of the evolutionary tree that eventually was a dead end. They were also not hairy and in fact there is more of an argument for them having no hair. Excess hair would’ve caused them to sweat thus possibly leading them to freeze to death as the sweat froze on them in their environment. They did not use clubs, but rather stone tools such as hand axes and projectile points to attach at the end of spears and the like. They also didn’t grunt, in fact in 1983 scientists discovered that the Neanderthals had hyoid bones that were almost identical to humans. Thus there is no reason to think that the Neanderthals weren’t capable of speech.
There you have it, some of the basic things that people tend to get wrong that royally make me cringe inside and want to scream the right answer. There are of course many more of them in a wide range of different categories, but these are just the ones that I felt the need to bring up today. Once again if anyone has any questions or wants me to clear up anything in particular drop me an email (curtincall89@gmail.com) or tweet me (@curtincall89).

Death After Life

2011-05-15T14:20:00.000-07:00

One thing that living at home entails is helping my brother with his homework and since he’s not the most academically minded means I have to do a lot of the work. So while he has been reading Hamlet and writing papers on it I have been rereading it. During this I remembered how much I loved this play and also how much I loved Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Now for those who don’t know Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are two characters that are in Hamlet and subsequently die (go figure). This book then chronicles there “death” and the bizarre things that they run into during this journey.

This then has influenced my next blog post which is actually an essay I wrote back when I was a senior in high school in AP Literature. Now one might this study of a piece of literature isn’t exactly an anthropological topic but I think it is important to talk about since we can look at anything from the anthropological perspective. More than anything this book does a great job at addressing the issue of death and defining exactly what it, which is a very touchy subject among many people. Different cultures have their ideas of what death actually is and this book brings up explanations both plausible and symbolic.

In the book Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead one of life’s biggest questions is raised: What is death? This question is evident through the whole book as Ros and Guil hover in their plane of existence, contemplating death. These two characters search for some concrete answer to this ambiguous question.

The concrete answer is never reached; there is disparity between Ros and Guil as to what death truly is. In Act III when the two of them are on a boat traveling to England, Guil comments on the boat symbolizing freedom: “One is free on a boat. For a time” (101). This statement is somewhat paradoxical since when they are on the boat they are confined in a small space. Contrasting Guil’s thought of the boat symbolizing freedom; Ros interprets the boat to symbolize death: “Do you think that death could possibly be a boat?” (108). This interpretation stems from Ros having to attribute everything to something concrete in order to be able to grasp it, to understand it.

This could be a possible answer to the question. If the boat symbolizes both death and freedom, then could death possibly be freedom? Is death freedom from the trials and tribulations of life and therefore nothing to fear? Guil seems to think so as he states in his long tirade, “Certainly it is a release from the burden of life, and, for the godly, a haven, and a reward” (110). The reader might think this is Guil’s character finally having an epiphany of sorts, on the subject of death. This play is however, Theatre of the Absurd and Guil merely dismisses it, forgetting about it forever.

One thing that the two can agree on is that death cannot be staged: “I’m talking about death… you cannot act it. You die a thousand casual deaths – with none of that intensity which squeezes out life… because even as you die you know that you will get up after death – there is no applause – there is only silence and some second-hand clothes, and that’s – death –“ (123). Death in a play isn’t real; death is such a hard concept to grasp that to portray it on a stage is impossible. Guil basically is saying that death on stage can’t be believed because the actor gets up after the curtain closes. The concept of death is eternal; one doesn’t wake up from it. From this deduction Guil inadvertently comes up with an answer; death is indescribable. The answer he comes up with is that death is well, death.

What Guil fails to realize is that earlier in the book, he came to this same realization, “Death’s death isn’t it?” (89). Once again since this is Theatre of the Absurd he does not remember this statement. This simple answer comes up again at the end of the play, while the two of them are dying. Ros tries, as he does throughout the play, to tie death to something tangible: “So there’s an end to that – it’s commonplace: light goes with life, and in the winter of your years the dark comes early” (124). So in Ros’ mind dark symbolizes death, though Guil quickly retorts, before they both fade, “Not for us… no not like that… death is not anything… death is not… It’s the absence of presence… it makes no sound…” (124).

At the end of the play we only get one answer to the question and it is far from concrete. Instead they come up with an extremely redundant answer: death is death. It is nothing more, nothing less. This answer seems to go along with the book well despite itself. The answer ties into the theme of inconsistency in the book. Ros and Guil try so hard to find the concrete answer. Ros searches for a symbol to embody death while Guil looks for the answer on a more philosophical level which parallels how many cultures and religions feel on the subject. All the answers that they come up with along the way are forgotten. Nothing in this play can be remembered; epiphanies go unnoticed and Ros and Guil die without a true grasp of what is going to happen to them now that they are dying reminiscent of many people’s journey into death.

Image Courtesy of rosencrantzandguildenstern.wordpress.com

Creation Myths: The Link Between Beliefs

2011-05-09T05:23:00.000-07:00

So as some of you might know I’ve been incredibly busy lately and haven’t had as much time to write blog posts as usual. First I’ve been interviewing for a job at a Cyber Security firm and I just found out on Friday that I got it! Second I have been working on the new exhibit for the Laurel History museum with the rest of the Exhibits Committee. This includes a lot of rifling through museum records and a whole bunch of research. Then thirdly and lastly I have been writing a new book in which I’m combining two of my short stories.

Needless to say these last weeks have been busy and will get busier especially when I start this job. That does not mean that I will abandon you all who read my blog, I love you all and appreciate all your support. This does mean that my blog posts will be fewer and also that I will mostly be recycling old papers that I have written over my college career (which in fact was what started the idea for this blog anyway as sort of a showcase of my work.

That being said, it brings us to the topic for today: Creation Myths. This was actually inspired by the interview that I had yesterday with the president of the company. We got completely off topic and started talking about world religions and how there are common threads run through all of them. I then brought up the topic about creation myths and “great flood” myths before we got back on track to the actual job interview.

Every religion has a creation myth and every religion has a “great flood” myth. This is yet one common thread that runs through every religion or religious practice. We all want to know where we came from, if someone, something or nothing at all created us. So I wanted to share with you all my re-creation of the Hindu Creation myth which is fact one of my favorites:

At the dawn of time there was nothing. No heavens, no earth, and nothing in between. A vast dismal sea washed upon the banks of nothingness, and caressed the outskirts of the night. A giant cobra sat in the deep sea – snoozing within its infinite spools lay the Lord Vishnu. And he was watched over by the omnipotent serpent. Everything was silent and empty and Vishnu slept unmoved and undisturbed (The Bhagavat Purana).

Suddenly from the depths, a humming sound began to rumble, Om. It spread threw the vast nothingness and throbbed with electrifying energize. The night was no more. Vishnu then awoke from his deep sleep. As the sun began to creep up the horizon, a lotus flower blossomed from Vishnu’s navel, and inside that blossom sat Vishnu’s servant, Brahma who awaited the Lord’s command (The Bhagavat Purana).

Vishnu said to his servant: “It is time to begin,” Brahma bowed to his master. Vishnu commanded, “create the world.” Then a great wind swept up the sea and the serpent vanished, as Brahma was still uncased in the lotus flower, in the pounding sea. Then Brahma lifted up his arms and the sea became calm, and wind stilled. Brahma then split the lotus flower into three parts, one he threw up to the heavens, another into the earth, and yet another he used to create the skies (The Bhagavat Purana).

But alas the earth was bare, so Brahma set to work creating grass, flowers, trees and vegetation of all kind. To them he gave feeling. Then he created the animals and the insects to live on the land. He put the birds in the air to fly, and the fish in the sea to swim. And to all these creatures he gave the ability to touch, to smell, to see, to hear, to move. The world was bustling with life and air was filled with the sounds of Brahma’s creation (The Bhagavat Purana).

So now that you have a better understanding of how the Hindus believed the earth was created let’s look at another one of my favorite creation myths. Now this one you might have seen earlier in my American Indian series. This is the Cherokee creation myth:

When the world was all water, as the Cherokee believed it was, the animals lived in the upper world but it become over crowded so the new world was created. The way the story went is that Beaver’s Grandchild water beetle dove into the water all the way down to see what the new world was like. When he reached the bottom water-beetle discovered soft mud which he then picked up and smoothed and spread it until it became the great island which is now earth. The Cherokee believed that this island was a literal island that was floating above the sea which was suspended at four points by cords of rock (Rochete 2010).

Over this island the Great Buzzard flew and when the earth was still soft and wet his wings struck the ground creating the valleys and mountains. The other animals stopped him though before he made the whole world mountainous (this is why the Cherokee land in the Appalachians was supposed to be so mountainous). Along with that the Cherokee believed that the first two Cherokee were Kana’ti and his wife Selu. These two are the fixtures of which the Cherokee hunting and farming came from (Rochete 2010).

The stories go that their sons let all the animals escape from the great vault which is why the people have to hunt them. Also Selu got pregnant and gave birth to both corn and beans overnight; because of her son believed she was a powerful witch and killed her. As a result of her death corn and beans sprouted from her blood but as a punishment Selu’s sons had to work to grow and produce it from then on (Rochete 2010).

We can see that there are similarities as well as differences in these stories but the general theme of creating something from very little or nothing is there. Now like I said every religion has a creation myth so there are tons of different takes on these ideas of creation and birth/rebirth.

References:

Rochete, Eric

2010. Anth 146 Lecture for September 20, 2010.

The Pennsylvania State University.

The Bhagavat Purana (English translation)

Image courtesy of symbolphotos.blogspot.com

Progression of Egyptian Language

2011-05-03T05:25:00.000-07:00

So as many of you know there has been a ongoing “feud” among anthropologists and historians alike on what the cradle of civilization was. Many believe it was Mesopotamia (I’m among those people) and the others believe that it was Egypt. There are many parallels when it comes to these two regions especially when talking about technology, language and mythology. This feud had become so bad that these two regions are hardly ever studied together.

For example my Mesopotamian Civilizations class hardly ever mentioned the Egyptians when talking about the wars, kings, religion, etc. The only time my professor mentioned Egypt was to point out this split when it comes to the study of the Ancient World. Now usually I am on the side of Mesopotamia that they had more innovations and ultimately lead to how we live our lives (hell I even wrote my entrance essay for UMD on that) but today I’m going to touch on Egypt and the progression of language.

We’ll pretend for a second that I love the Egyptians more (and that they’re not egocentric idiots) to explain their development of their language. There development is actually quite ingenious and fascinating to study (and I can see my Mes. Civ. Professor rolling his eyes now). They had four stages of their language: First stage Hieroglyphics, second stage Hieratic, third stage Demotic, and fourth stage Coptic.

Hieroglyphics was one of the first writing systems developed by man, 5000 years ago. Hieroglyphics are phonetic (representing a sound). Hieroglyphic was the earliest script form of Egyptian. It was a recognizable forms that to represent a person, an object, or an idea. They could be combined with different signs to spell out the words of the spoken language. However, the hieroglyphic indicates consonants only. Hieroglyphic was used for formal inscriptions, and mainly found on stone, pottery, and ivory.

Hieratic was used until 650 BC. It was a more simple style of writing compared to Hieroglyphics. Hieratic was adopted from hieroglyphic script for a quicker record of non-monumental context. It was a more fluent form of script than Hieroglyphics. It was a script for administration and business use that to record literature, scientific, and religious documents. Hieratic was written in black ink with a brush made of reed or a reed pen. The scribes wrote on papyri and ostraca (fragments of pottery or stone used as writing surfaces). It was always written from right to left.

Demotic script was used from 650 BC - AD 450. Demotic comes from Greek, meaning popular script. It was simplified to use for daily purposes. Yet, it derived directly from hieratic, making it difficult to read and almost impossible to transcribe into any hieroglyphic counterpart. It was a cursive script with no more icons or pictures. It was maintained in horizontal lines and written right to left. Demotic texts were generally administrative, legal and commercial. A few are literary compositions, scientific and religious texts.

Coptic was used from AD 100 - AD 640. Coptic derived via Arabic from the Greek word Aiguptios, 'Egyptian.’ It was spoken by Egyptian Christians. It is considered the final phase of Egyptian language. Coptic script consisted with borrowings from Greek and different Semitic languages. It consisted of 24 letters from the Greek alphabet, each letter representing a single sound. There were also 6 signs from Demotic, for sounds not represented in Greek. It became a fully alphabetic script with vowels and consonants

The decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs was made possible by discovery of the Rosetta Stone, found in 1799 by Napoleonic troops fighting in Egypt. Although the stone was first the possession of a French officer, the victorious British demanded (and ultimately got) it, and it currently resides in the British Museum.

So what does this all boil down to? Well I have a very ingenious example that I came up with to further break down this progression:

Picture of someone walking through a door then coming back → Be right back →

brb → Someone saying the words “be right back”

Hopefully that puts it more in perspective so that you all can understand the progression and understand how language works. Now that I got that off my chest I can go back to my thoughts that the Mesopotamians were the better ones. I mean come on Ziggurats are awesome are they not? What about the fact that they carved everything into stone so we have long records of them? Okay, okay I’ll leave that for another day I guess.

Image Courtesy of fontriver.com

Modern Day Witch-Hunts: Azande pt. 3

2011-04-28T05:26:00.001-07:00

“To the Azande the question of guilt does not present itself as it would to us.” This is a notion that is brought up when talking about whether the witches confess to their crimes or not. There is a question then of morality among the Azande and whether they really understand what is right and wrong. To explain this lack of morality they ultimately blame witchcraft. These notions of a moral compass being off track are side effects of witchcraft. So for example if a man commits adultery he is said to be a witch (Evans-Pritchard 56).

So are these witches dealt with? Well that is a very complicated question in which Evans-Pritchard spends a good third of the book trying to explain. See to first find out who the witch was, the victim has to go to a “poison oracle” who then goes through different rituals (yep all involving poison) to find the witch and bring them to justice. Now there are charts and examples out the wazoo of different types of rituals and the aftermath of the rituals (Evans-Pritchard 57). Once again if you want to get the full story read the ethnography (which I can’t stress enough is incredibly fascinating) but what it comes down to is this. Witchcraft is blamed for everything in the society but the witches aren’t burnt at the stake like we see in Europe and other parts of the world. This whole cycle of retribution through these oracles is a normal part of the Azande society. Think of it as our system of law, well sort of.

Out of all the different views of witches and witchcraft there are some among the Azande that are just plain, well weird for lack of another word. First I have to mention that the Azande believed that many animals were actually witches or dead witches inhabiting animals. The Azande then feared many of the wild animals but none more than the wild cat that they called adandara. The Azande describe the adandara: “It is witchcraft; they are the same as witchcraft” (Evans-Pritchard 237).

It is believed that the male of the adandara have sexual relations with women of the villages. The women then give birth to kittens and breast feeds them like human children (oh don’t worry it gets weirder). These cats are supposed to be avoided at all times and it is believed that even hearing their cries in the brush are fatal. To drive off the adandara, one has to get a magical whistle from an oracle. One blow of the whistle will scare away the adandara (Evans-Pritchard 237).

In addition to the cats being evil and associated with witchcraft, so is Lesbianism. In fact sexual relations between two women is given the same name as the wild cats: adandara. “They say ‘it is the same as cat.’ This comparison is based upon the like inauspiciousness of both phenomena and on the fact that both are female actions which may cause the death of any man who witnesses them.” Because Lesbianism is considered evil, the women who were caught engaging in it were punished. Now, one would think that they would be punished similar to the witches, with the oracles involved. It is interesting though that many of the women who were engaging in homosexual activity were executed, for it was considered the highest evil among witchcraft (Evans-Pritchard 238).

I mentioned in the previous post that women and men were equally responsible for witchcraft, but that didn’t mean that men and women were treated equally. As we can see just from the accounts of Lesbianism, women were more likely to be punished than men. In fact the women in the society could be punished for many different things most of with were blamed on witchcraft (like everything else in the society). Then any “unusual” function of the woman genitalia in general was considered to be unlucky and evil which goes back to giving birth to cats and homosexual tendencies. In fact even menstruation was considered to be an agent of witchcraft (Evans-Pritchard 239).

Okay and then we get even weirder. If a man is the possessor of bad teeth he is called an irakörinde and is thought to be extremely bad luck. Also if when he was born the man grew his top teeth before his bottom teeth he was also considered an irakörinde. The irakörinde were then kept away from new crops and anything that was being built since they caused things to break or crops to die. The problem is then how can the villagers tell who has bad teeth? Well that is hard to tell, so once again they relied on the oracles to provide them with magical charms and guidance against them (Evans-Pritchard 240).

Hopefully you have learned a lot from this study on the Azande and their bizarre notions of evil and witchcraft. What you should take away from this is that this is all going on now, this is not an account from thousands of years ago; it is the 20^th century. That is what the 30 days of advocacy against witch-hunts has strived to do, expose the atrocities that are plaguing our world. Just because these 30 days are now up does not mean that we stop spreading the word. We have to continue to open people’s eyes up to this because (once again sounding like a broken record) most people don’t know and don’t want to know that this is something that is still alive and well today. I hope that you pass the information that you learn in my blog, as well as other participants in this movement, along and that you take something away from it all.

References:

E.E. Evans-Pritchard. Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande. Oxford University Press, 1976.

Modern Day Witch-Hunts: Azande pt. 2

2011-04-26T05:48:00.001-07:00

The first part of this look at the Azande I gave you some background on Evans-Pritchard and his ethnography Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande. Hopefully that background on author and the Azande people will give you a better of understanding when it comes to how the Azande view witchcraft. This post I will now be focusing on those views of witchcraft and how it falls in this society.

“[All] death is due to witchcraft and must me avenged” (Evans-Pritchard 5). This was the line that I ended the last post with and it pretty much summed up the core of the values of the Azande and witchcraft in their society. What it comes down to is that whenever anything happens in the community whether it is death, sickness a child running away, etc witchcraft is always to be blamed for it (Evan-Pritchard 6).

What is interesting though is that if the “culprit” of the sickness or death is found not only do they have to pay (usually literally with money) but their family also. The reason the family has to pay is because like I mentioned in the last post, the “witchcraft-substance” is considered an inherent part of them, thus the whole family is responsible for it (Evans-Pritchard 7).

Another thing that is unique to the Azande look on witchcraft is this idea that the witch-craft substance grows as you age. With this growing of the psychical substance the “power” that a person has also grows with them. This is why many of the Azande fear the elders in the society and they get blamed for the majority of the problems that are witchcraft related, which among them is everything. With that said, children that have the witchcraft substance aren’t seen as a threat because it is thought to be very small inside of them and practically harmless (Evans-Pritchard 8).

Among the Azande men and women are equally accused of being witches. Like mentioned in the previous post the witchcraft-substance is passed from an ancestor of the same sex and thus a man is just as likely to be a witch as a woman (which of course is much different than a lot of the western ideas of witches). What is interesting though is that among the Azande it is more likely for a man to use witchcraft against a man and a woman against another woman. There are some cases where woman were accused of using witchcraft against a man but never a man against a woman (Evans-Pritchard8).

So we’ve talked about this concept of the “witchcraft-substance” which is inherently biological but there is another part to witchcraft. The actual action of the witches is something that is psychic and is known as mbisimo mangu which is the soul of witchcraft. It then comes down to the idea that the soul of witchcraft can leave the corporeal body of a witch at any given time to carry out the duty of the witch, but especially when they were asleep. This is how the Azande explained how some witches who were accused were sleeping at the time of the attacks/death/etc (Evans-Pritchard 10).

When the witchcraft leaves the body it is said to leave a trail of light behind almost like a fire fly, but the only people that can see this light is other witches or oracles. Sometimes men can see it because sometimes it will light other things like branches and things like because “witchcraft is like fire, it lights a light.” If a man does see this light he has to pick up a piece of charcoal and throw it under his bed otherwise misfortune will fall on him (Evans-Pritchard 11).

It is important to note though that this light is not the witch itself but more of an emanation from the soul. On the flipside the witchcraft soul is said to take part of the victim’s organs or what the Azande call mbisimo pasio. This basically means the “soul of his flesh” which than the witch will devour and share with his/her fellow witches. This whole act is very similar to the notions of vampirism but the difference? Among the Azande this whole process is one that is incorporeal because the soul of witchcraft is eating the soul of the organ or flesh (Evans-Pritchard 12).

So once again it is easy to see that the Azande’s look upon witchcraft (every part of it) as an evil thing. Their ideas are much different that the Europeans had on witchcraft or really any other culture’s feelings towards witchcraft. Now you have to remember that I’m sort of summarizing these ideas for if I mentioned every single little notion they had on witchcraft I’d have to right my own book. So I strongly urge you to go out and read Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande.

Now that you have more of an idea on how the Azande felt about witches and that they blamed witches for any problems that they had in their society we can next talk about how the society dealt with these witches. I will outline that in part three which will be the last part of the Azande witchcraft study as well as the last post in my witchcraft series. Once again I leave you with a line to help you anticipate what you will learn in the next section: “To the Azande the question of guilt does not present itself as it would to us.”

References:

E.E. Evans-Pritchard. Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande. Oxford University Press, 1976.

Modern Day Witch-Hunts: Azande pt. 1

2011-04-23T13:43:00.000-07:00

So we have been discussing witch-hunts that have been happening in modern day times and the numbers are numerous. Now that I have shared with you the details surrounding the deaths of many we can safely day the majority of them are a result of the this “fear of the unknown.” The need to blame a group of people for sickness, misfortunes and the like which like I have mentioned has been going on for thousands of years. Now though it’s time to discuss what people of different cultures really think of witch and the practice of witchcraft and sorcery.

Now obviously I am foremost a writer who is objectively looking at these cases but also I am an aspiring anthropologist who looks at things through an anthropological lens at time. Then I would me remise if I didn’t pull information from perhaps one of the most helpful pieces of writing when it comes to getting at the core of a culture. This of course is an ethnography. Now I never assume that people know what I’m talking about when I get into “technical” speak so for those out there who don’t know ethnographies are the writings of an anthropologist who immerses themselves in a culture for an extended period of time. The ethnography then chronicles the time that they’ve spent and can be anywhere from the size of a short novella to a large book reminiscent of encyclopedias.

My favorite ethnography and one that I actually own falls into this whole series of witch-hunts perfectly is Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande. This ethnography was written by Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard who was a professor of Social Anthropology at Oxford University from 1946 until 1970. During the late 20s Evans-Prichard and a team of researches journeyed to the Southern Sudan and lived among Azande and learned all they could about them. The ethnography was originally published in 1937 but no one really seemed to care about these villages in Sudan and their practices. It was until the 1950s that it became talked about in anthropological circles. To this day ones cannot take a class or have a detailed discussion on sorcery or witchcraft beliefs without mentioning Evans-Pritchard’s work.

Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande is a very detailed look at the beliefs among the Azande and their views about witchcraft and the implications of it on their lives. It is so detailed though that I can only mention so much of it without practically quoting all 265 pages of it. For these last couple of days of the 30 Days of Advocacy Against Witch-Hunts I will be discussing the ethnography with an emphasis on how the witches are treated in the society and specifically the outlandish and bizarre views that the community has on the subject. I urge you all to go and read this ethnography on your own since it is a beyond fascinating read.

For this first post on the Azande I just want to give some background and their ideas of witchcraft. Once again I feel better quoting Evans-Pritchard directly to get the full feel of what he experienced when he first entered the community:

Azande believe that some people are witches and can injure them in virtue of an inherent quality. A witch performs no rite, utters no spell, and possesses no medicines. An act of witchcraft is a psychic act. They believe also that sorcerers may do them ill by performing magic rites with bad medicines. Azande distinguish clearly between witches and sorcerers (Evans-Pritchard 1).

So right away with his first paragraph in his ethnography we already get the sense that these notions of witchcraft are a lot different than many other witchcraft practices around the world and thus have much different implications to the society.

Throughout the ethnography Evans-Pritchard stresses that there is no problem finding information about witchcraft among the Azande. They talk freely about it and will tell him and the rest of his researches whatever they want to know about the subject. He talks about how the first word he ever heard uttered in the village was “Mangu” which in the Azande language means witchcraft.

Evans-Pritchard then explains the concept of what a witch is after talking to one Azande village man:

[They] believe that witchcraft is a substance in the bodies of witches… it is difficult to say which organ Azande associate with witchcraft. I have never seen a witchcraft-substance, but it has often been described to me as an oval blackish swelling or a bag in which several various small objects are sometimes found. When Azande describe its shape they often point to the elbow of their bent arm and when they describe its location they point to just beneath the xiphoid cartilage which is said to ‘cover witchcraft-substance.’ They say: “It is attached to the edge of the liver. When people cut open the belly they have to only pierce it and witchcraft-substance bursts through with a pop (Evans-Pritchard 2).

So already we have this picture in our heads of what exactly this witchcraft substance is and the way it is describes isn’t an appealing one. So one could argue that it is something that is considered bad in the society just from the way it is described by the villagers, like it is a tumor or a disease of some kind.

The question then becomes, where does this substance come from? Does it grow within the person or is one born with it? Well the answer is the Azande believe that the witchcraft-substance is inherited. It is passed “…by unilinear descent from parent to child. The sons of a male witch are all witches but his daughters are not, while the daughters of a female witch are all witches but their sons are not.” Evans-Pritchard then goes into more detail about how this biological transmission is one that complements the beliefs of sex among the Azande which is another study all in itself (Evans-Pritchard 2).

So hopefully now you have a better grip on what exactly makes a Azande witch a witch in the eyes of the people. In the next couple of posts I will be outlining how the society views these witches and what happens to them. I then leave you with this notion that the Azande have “[all] death is due to witchcraft and must me avenged” (Evans-Pritchard 5).

References:

E.E. Evans-Pritchard. Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande. Oxford University Press, 1976.

Cover of the Book pictured above

Modern Day Witch-hunts: Spreading the Word

2011-04-21T05:59:00.000-07:00

In the last post I touched on how little information there is out there on these atrocities going on in this day and age. I probably run the risk of sounding like a broken record but the majority of the world’s population just doesn’t believe that this is a problem or that it’s even happening. Through this whole series I went around to some of my friends and mentioned a few words and told them to tell me the first things that came to their minds. The first phrase was “witch-hunts.” Most immediately said the Salem Witch trials, a couple said the French Witch trials and one brought up McCarthy and communism. Still that gives you an idea of what people think of when they hear these words.

The fact of the matter is this is something that is not just limited to the past; it is something that is happening more and more around the word and the media just isn’t covering it. Now I had mentioned before that I had only found a few articles that even mentioned the witch-hunts and the ones that did had extreme biases. Well I found this one great article that was written in 2006 by a woman named Phebe A. Durand.

Durand’s article is titled appropriately “The Burning Times – A History of Persecution” in which she exposes many of the horrible acts that have happened in modern times. The first part of this article is brilliantly written so instead of trying to sum it up I’ll just quote it so nothing is lost. Durand writes:

The words burn into my eyes like gruesome headlines: 2 Women Killed By a Mob in Ghana. 1 burned alive at Verkhnesadovye. And, finally, a 55 year old woman doused with gasoline and set afire at Hammanskraael, South

Africa. These people, condemned as witches, were not persecuted in the 16th or 17th century. The "unknown" 55 year old woman was murdered on 19 July, 1996.

The 20th century death toll is as ridiculous as it is long. In November, 1925 a person was shot in Germany as a suspected werewolf. One was killed for sorcery in France, 1977. And between the years 1986 and 1996, over 300 people suspected of witchcraft were killed in South Africa. Not chilled to the bone yet? Listen closely to the last entry on the Witch Killings database: Tikambai Sahu, killed by a mob, Nagpur India, 27 June, 2000 (Durand 2006).

Couldn’t have said it any better, she really got at the heart of what is really going on. This is not something that is limited to the past; I can’t drill that home enough. These are real people not characters in a movie or a novel; real live people who are now dead.

Durand goes on to talk about the “Witch Killings Database” that she got this information from. The database is called “The Burning Times” and is a comprehensive list of almost every accused witch that was executed in our modern times. She points out that this list is not run by a pagan group but by a group of people who are “devoted to recording acts of inhumanity- in every religion” (Durand 2006).

This group of people released this statement about their list, “Some were guilty. Most were probably innocent and Christian. A few were "satanists", most were not. Some were just senile. Or too ugly. Or too pretty. Or just in the wrong place at the wrong time. At least one was subsequently made a Saint... We present this list as historical data... and as an object lesson in the ultimate results of intolerance, superstition, and hate-mongering” (Durand 2006).

Once again I couldn’t have said it any better myself. This just shows people’s need to accuse something/someone for their problems even if in reality they make no sense what so ever (like in the political cartoon above). This is the only article that I found (well besides those who like me who are participating in the 30 Days of Advocacy against Witch-hunts) that actually exposes these witch-hunts for what they are and strives to educate people about what is happening.

References

Phebe A. Durand. The Burning Times - a History of Persecution. Feb 8, 2006

Political Cartoon Courtesy of sanfords.net

Modern Witch-Hunts: India

2011-04-18T12:52:00.000-07:00

So as you know this month I have been devoting my blog posts to talking about witch-hunts and trials throughout the world. Up until this point we have been discussing all the ones in the past. As you remember they were full of kids being tortured and killed, so called witches being blamed for the most ludicrous things and in some villages the entire women population wiped out. The saddest thing out of all of this? It isn’t something that was just that is just of the past.

One thing though that is perhaps even more sad through this is that people aren’t talking about what is going on. I mentioned this is my first post, but people just don’t get it. Witch-hunts, trials and persecution aren’t things limited to Salem or Medieval Europe as many people think. Another thing sad about this? There is hardly any press on this issue. Upon looking through articles in major magazines, newspapers and journals there are only a handful of articles that actually mention the hunts and out of those only a few that actually paint it in the light that it should be in.

While looking through these articles I found one written in 2006 in the New York Times that caught my attention the most. The thing that caught my attention was the first line of the article: “Unidentified attackers hacked to death five villagers accused of practicing witchcraft in northeastern India, officials said Tuesday” (Conroy 2006). That line is enough to make anyone stop and question what would possess this to go on. This was perhaps the only article I found that showed the actual brutality that has been going on in this area of India, for this is not the first time.

The article then goes on to talk about the past and how this is not an isolated event. These deaths are all people that have been killed over practicing sorcery in a remote part of the Assam state. At least nine in the past two weeks were killed in this area where many indigenous tribes practice witchcraft. This particular event took place in August of 2006 in the district of Kokrajhar; around 156 miles west of Gauhati, the state capital, said Mrinal Talukdar, a senior police official. Talukdar describes the event: “six men armed with machetes stormed a house... and hacked three members of a family to death late Sunday accusing them of practicing sorcery” (Conroy 2006).

Anyone that doesn’t feel horribly sick at the thought of that should really evaluate themselves. Yet these are the kind of events that are constantly being pushed under the rug or barely mentioned especially in our Western thinking society. This article though is not void of the western bias. It has a lot of the words like “alleged” and “believed” and “suspected” and not once does it ever come out and say that these people were actually witches.

Other than that the article does a great job at pointing out these horrid events that took place in these villages in August of 2006. He even brings up the ludicrous notions that these witches were killed “[when] suspicions stemmed from the recent deaths of two people in Nandipur from an unknown ailment” (Conroy 2006). So what do we see again? Sickness is being blamed on witchcraft, something that has been going on since the dawn of time.

One thing though that really stuck out was that the Indian government is actually planning on doing something to stop this which is something that we don’t see in a lot of areas in the world. "I am planning to tackle the menace by imposing a collective fine on an entire area where people accused of practicing witchcraft are hunted and killed," said the Baska district magistrate, Anwaruddin Choudhury (Conroy 2006).

Conroy then ends the article with a summary of what has happened in the past 5 years and how more than 150 people have been killed in the northeast after being accused of practicing witchcraft or sorcery (Conroy 2006). So we can see from this article that these things are still going on in the modern world. The notions of witchcraft that were alive and well back in the ancient world have kept strong and have shown themselves all around the modern world. We need more articles like this one that expose what is going on out there and that is what I am hoping to do with these blog posts. That is what the 30 Days of Advocacy against Witch-Hunts is hoping to do.

References:

Conroy, Scott. Modern-Day Witch Hunt in Remote India. GAUHATI, India, Aug. 22, 2006

North Berwick Witch Trials in Scotland

2011-04-13T12:18:00.000-07:00

There were many witch trials going on in Scotland, especially in the 17^th century. Somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 accused witches may have been executed in Scotland in during the period of 1560-1707. Around 2,000 of those witches were killed in the 60 years from 1620-1680. The first round of persecution occurred 30 years earlier in 1590 in North Berwick (witches.net).

This round of trials lasted two years in which 70 people were accused including Francis Stewart, 5th Earl of Bothwell on charges of high treason. After arrested, most of the “witches” were tortured and then the majority of them confessed. The key piece of information that was tortured out of these people was that they held their covens on the Auld Kirk Green, part of the modern-day North Berwick Harbor area (Ankarloo).

As absurd as it sounds, these trials were actually started by the royals who were blaming “witches” for a horrible storm they got stuck in. The way the story goes King James VI sailed to Copenhagen to marry Princess Anne, sister of Christian IV, King of Denmark. On their way back to Scotland they got caught in terrible storms and had to shelter in Norway for several weeks before continuing. The admiral of the Danish fleet that was escorting the couple blamed the storm on the wife of a high official in Copenhagen whom he had insulted before. This then caused several nobles of the Scottish court to be implicated, and witchcraft trials were held in both countries (Ankarloo).

After that whole ordeal over a hundred suspected witches in North Berwick were arrested. During the torture I had mentioned earlier, many confessed to having met with the Devil in the church at night, and devoted themselves to doing evil. These evil things they did included poisoning the King and other members of his household, and attempting to sink the King's ship (Ankarloo).

The most famous story perhaps of this trial was of Agnes Sampson who was examined by James VI at his palace called Holyrood House. She was fastened to the wall of her cell by a witch's bridle. A witch’s bridle was an iron instrument that had 4 sharp prongs that were forced into the mouth, so that two prongs pressed against the tongue, and the two others against the cheeks. She was kept constantly awake by a rope that was placed around her neck so that if she nodded off she would end up strangling herself. It was only after these torturous ordeals did Agnes Sampson confess to the fifty-three indictments against her. She was then finally executed by being strangled and then burned (Ankarloo).

References

www.witches.net

Ankarloo, B., Clark, S. & Monter, E. W. () Witchcraft and Magic in Europe.

Image is artist's rendering of the North Berwick Trials, courtesy of Itscotland.org.uk

Ancient Widespread Witch Persecution

2011-04-11T12:27:00.000-07:00

Ancient Mesopotamia wasn’t the only area where witchcraft was both prevalent and opposed to. There were many areas throughout Africa, Europe and Asia where witchcraft found its way into society and in the process got a (excuse the slang) bad rep. Most religions at this time were very opposed to the notions of witchcraft (well what they presumed were the practices and purposes anyways) and thus anyone caught using magic, witchcraft or any other type of sorcery were persecuted.

Perhaps the greatest examples of persecution were the Ancient Romans. Now there have been stories of the Roman Empire persecuting anyone and everyone they could get their hands on. I mean even the Judea-Christian bible talks about Christians and Jews being persecuted for their beliefs. So it’s safe to say the Romans didn’t really like anyone who was different (which is the basis to most witch-hunts).

In Ancient Rome it was strictly against their religious practices to engage in any type of “other-worldly” activities (which in itself is a question of what that really entails). This included any use of magic such as sorcery or witchcraft. They had very strict rules concerning this and if anyone was caught doing any spells or practicing any kind of magic they were arrested. The people were also taught to keep a vigilant eye out for anyone breaking these rules. If one saw someone practicing and didn’t report them they were held to the same laws as those practicing. It was thought that they were enabling them if they didn’t report them. The punishment for either crimes involved arrest, then extensive torture and lastly execution (witches.net).

On the other spectrum there were ancients that actually embraced witchcraft and it became part of their everyday life. Ancient Egypt was one such place. There witches were considered wise and would help their “clients” by using their knowledge of magic to contort the cosmos to alter events and such. They used various tools to do this including amulets, special formulas, amulets and figures (witches.net).

Another area where witches had clients that they tended to was Ancient Greece. These people were considered to be part of a lower form of magic called mageia which was close to sorcery. These people were the ones who claimed to have knowledge and powers to help their clients and harm their clients’ enemies by performing rites or supplying certain formulas (witches.net). The reason I say claimed is because many were fakes that were looking for quick money (which one could relate to the fake palm readers and phone psychics of modern days).

The other form of magic was of a much higher caliber and was even considered by many to be whole religion within itself. It was called Theurgy and was thought to be a very high and powerful form of magic, superior to mageia and many other magic practices at these times in history all around the world (witches.net).

So it is easy to see that the ideas of witchcraft were spread all around the world at this time (well where we have records of them). Not all of them were persecuted at this time in history since in many places the notions of the “supernatural,” witchcraft and sorcery was accepted. Though like any other period in time we did have the tyrants like the Romans who pioneered mass witch-hunts.

References

www.witches.net

Image of the painting of the Greek witch Erichtho at the British Museum.