Asian Perspectives, 2021 - Volume 60, Number 1 (Spring)
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Item In Memoriam: REMEMBERING ANNE PIKE-TAY (10 JUNE 1956 – 16 APRIL 2020)(2021-05-28) Peterson, Veronica; Burke, Ariane; Katz, Heidi; Lin, Minghao; Cosgrove, Richard; Garvey, JillianItem In Memoriam: A Tribute to Sarah M. Nelson(2021-05-28) Barnes, Gina L; Ikawa-Smith, Fumiko; Linduff, Katheryn M.Item Lene Kici Cave Art: Possible Symbolic Evidence Associated with Palaeolithic Human Occupation in Timor-Leste(2021-05-28) Garcia_Diez, Marcos; Standish, Chrisopher D; Oliviera, Nuno Vasco; O'Connor, SueHand stencils are the oldest manifestations of Palaeolithic cave art. Recent archaeological field research in the Tutuala region of Timor-Leste has documented new archaeological sites at the Lene Kici caves that include Palaeolithic hand motifs and other nonfigurative motifs including a disk, dots, a triangle, and possible other geometric shapes. This study characterizes the production techniques, shapes, composition, and spatial locations of these motifs. Based on the available information and regional context, a Pleistocene chronology is considered highly probable. The context of the hand stencils suggests they were not occasional motifs; rather, they seem to have dominated the early graphic repertoire of the earliest settler groups in Southeast Asia and the islands of Wallacea.Item Gendered Households and Ceramic Assemblage Formation in the Mariana Islands, Western Pacific from Pacific Region Experience(2021-05-28) Miller, Jacy M; Moore, Darlene R; Bayman, James MThe archaeological investigation of gendered labor is vital for interpreting households in the Mariana Islands because Spanish documentary accounts are largely silent regarding their spatial organization. Preliminary analyses of excavated materials from a household on the island of Guam revealed that it comprised two adjacent buildings (latte) that were economically integrated and within which craft activities by women and men were spatially segregated. More detailed analyses of ceramic assemblages confirm that household labor was gendered in other respects. Women prepared and stored food in large ceramic vessels at the building where they also conducted craftwork, whereas men consumed food from smaller serving vessels at the adjacent building where they crafted. This household arrangement illustrates gender complementarity in a matrilineal society that also exhibited aspects of a gender hierarchy wherein women had significant power during the Late Latte and early Spanish Contact periods (ca. A.D. 1500–1700Item To Eat or Not to Eat? Animals and Categorical Fluidity in Shang Society(2021-05-28) Jeffe, Yitzchak; Campbell, RoderickIn Shang scholarship, animals have frequently been understood in terms of religion. Animals are viewed as powerful totemic symbols of clans or fantastic vehicles connecting shamans to the spirit realm, or the central components of ritual sacrifice. Such discourses take modern Western ontological assumptions concerning human– animal and religious-secular distinctions for granted, however. Incorporating new textual and archaeological data, as well as theoretical advances made in related disciplines, we examine the consumption of animals to shed new light on the nature of Shang being, society, and animality. A wide theoretical stance is taken to untangle some of the underlying assumptions that have governed research on the Shang. The Shang world that emerges was characterized by a fluid sense of being. Some creatures were especially mutable and so assumed many functions in Shang society, from prized companions to offerings and food sources. Our findings call into question the reification of religion and ritual as spheres of action fundamentally separate from daily activities, as has often been implicitly assumed by Shang scholars. We argue that divination and offerings to the spirits and the dead were important practices of the general social economy of the Shang.