Gastrojejunostomy During Laparoscopic Gastric Bypass

2007

2011

This article from the ‘Classics Review’ section of the journal ‘ethnoarchaeology’ provides the back story and update for “Ceramic Theory and Cultural Process” published in 1985 and reprinted many times since then. That book built on the seminal article that I wrote for ‘Current Anthropology’ ten years earlier, and my responses to my critics there that stimulated me to write the book (those articles are on this site). Besides several anecdotes about the book, one section of the article provides a brief ethnography of its publication at the Cambridge University Press. One of my greatest frustrations that stimulated writing of the book was that my former focus on the cognitive anthropology (e. g. Arnold 1971) of ceramic production and my focus on what has come to be known as ‘technological choice’ among potters failed to provide much insight into understanding ceramic production outside of the ceramics in the communities that I studied. Those theoretical and conceptual perspectives, although helpful and useful, did not help me provide insight into another pottery making community except that ‘potters make choices’ about resources, vessel shapes, and design. I already knew that from my field work; it was very obvious to me. I had written several articles that incorporated potters’ choices that I called ‘decision trees’. (These articles will be added to this site in due time), and the frustration of the incomparability of my perspective from one pottery making community to another that led me to rethink my experiences with potters in Mexico, Peru and Guatemala, in order to discover new insights that were truly cross-cultural in scope. The results were generalizations, but not necessarily universals, in ’Ceramic Theory and Cultural Process’. Some of these generalizations challenged assumptions and generalizations that archaeologists used to interpret the past. Finally, the article makes several updates to the ceramic resource model, and other feedback mechanisms in the book.

2014

The cultural factors that led the craft of potmaking into a seasonal, part-time and a women-oriented craft are identified among the Andro, a potmaking population of Manipur who inhabit in a village of the same name situated on the eastern fringe of the Imphal East District of the State, among whom the craft is a part-time, attached and a women-oriented occupation. It is seen that among the people the craft of potmaking is a monopoly of the married women debarring their unmarried counterparts in excelling the craft. And this restriction of the craft to the unmarried Andro females is rather a cultural strategy, which may be perceived as a boundary–maintaining mechanism of the tradition within the community, and that again subsequently led the craft a monopoly at the village level. In the light of the theoretical perspectives of cybernetics model rooted in systems paradigm, the present paper envisages to identify a series of feedback mechanisms that favours or limits to the monopoly of the development and continuity of pot making among the Andro married females. Remarkable negative feedback mechanisms that gave birth to the monopoly of the craft within the Andro village are also identified. In fact the making of the art of potmaking as a female-centered, household craft owes to: (1) the ritual restrictions of ceramic resources exploitation, where resource collection in a potting year is always regulated by the culturally prescribed rituals – duly performed by the three ultimogenitural male issues (Pibas) of the three Andro lineages. (2) the sexual scheduling of the household-craft of potmaking in the light of the role expectation of the women in the society, providing negative feedback in growing pottery making into a women-oriented craft. An attempt is being made to determine how the present ethnographic observations and context can be used to understand the past more fully and also attempted to draw a model of ethnographic generalization of the aforesaid relationship that can be applied to the prehistoric past, an important arena of ceramic ethnoarchaeological significance.

Skeuomorphs are copies of prototype artifacts replicated in different physical materials in the derivative objects. The skeuomorph copy may or may not have a utilitarian function, and the original function of the prototype attribute may change or become less functional with successive copying. Because skeuomorphs are an imitation of the prototype model, they are iconic representations. Archaeological examples of pottery vessel skeuomorphs are presented and interpreted with evidence from ethnography, psychology, and modern material culture. This review lends support to the proposal that skeuomorphism is a causal factor in technological change. Skeuomorphs facilitate acceptance of innovations in artifacts by (1) materializing the pre-existing familiar value of prototypes as attributes transferred to unfamiliar derivative objects; (2) evoking positive social memories associated with the prototype; and (3) creating broader scales of value by creating novel variants of similar objects. [skeuomorph, pottery, technological change]

2015

The research essay explores new scientific approaches in the study of the artefact as material culture and in particular the contemporary theory that the artefact embodies a narrative of itself, its time, and its society. There has been a progressive shift away from object-specific archaeology where attention tended to focus on sign values with which to identify and date cultures. Artefacts ranging from something as simple as a glass bead to a monumental architectural structure, are now considered to connect or become entangled with their cultural and historical environments beyond their obvious functional forms and usages. Such theorising requires a holistic, multi-disciplinary approach in research and interpretation. Reference will be made to pottery artefacts in Roman material culture to illustrate contemporary theories and methodologies . To put the contemporary theories and methodologies in perspective, the science of archaeology in its classical form as well as the related sciences which archaeology drew into its ambit, require some discussion. The artefact per se will be defined with commentary on how it fits into, and participates in the material culture of a society. The current literature in which authors argue in favour of the agency of the artefact to affect makers, owners and users, will be reviewed. In the final section of the essay, reference is made to Roman material culture to illustrate that the artefact can be ‘read’ as a narrative of entangled social, economic, ideological, and religious values and practises. Though Roman primary sources offer very limited insights into the aesthetic values assigned to pottery in material culture, this will nevertheless receive attention. The essay reflects academic arguments to support contemporary debate that artefacts, when considered only as archaeological objects, will reveal little beyond their cultural origin, typology, dating, materials, method of production, circulation and usage. The alternative which is being promoted, is a meta-methodology with which artefact can be ‘read’ as having agency to generate and gain reciprocal meanings and values. When the artefact can be understood from that point of view, it can be considered as an entangled narrative.

Archaeology, Ethnology and Anthropology of Eurasia, 2013

The main goal of the Symposium was to clarify the place and role of pottery in the food consumption culture of the peoples of the world from ancient times to the present, to investigate local and general features of pottery use, and to identify interethnic mutual in uences and interrelations in this area of material culture. Experts in ancient and modern pottery art from the Ukraine,

Proceedings of the International Ceramics Conference, Austceram94: Forming the Future, 1994

Pottery is the most commonly recovered and analysed artefact type in Middle Eastern archaeology. The usefulness of pottery to the archaeologist stems from its abundance, durability, and stylistic variability. As vessel shape and surface decoration reflect the aesthetic preferences of producers and consumers, significant stylistic changes are often used as evidence for broader social change. Two examples are cited: Early Islamic Jordan and Roman Europe. Pottery studies in both regions have indicated that the arrival of a new ruling elite had little immediate impact on the local population. The evidence for major social change does not appear until almost two centuries later in the archaeological record.

American Anthropologist, 1991

One of the important assumptions of compositional analysis is that the elemental composition an artifact reflects the source of the materials used to make it. Thus, pottery from a particu source will be chemically similar to the raw materials from that source. This "commonsen assumption seems beyond dispute, but the fact that pottery is a mixture of clay, water, and of temper added by the potter, complicates the interpretation of compositional data from ceram This article examines the relationship between potters' behavior in obtaining and using r materials, on the one hand, and the chemical composition of their finished pottery, on the other, comparing the elemental composition of ethnographic pottery and raw materials from contem rary pottery-making communities in the Valley of Guatemala. The results of this research sh that the relationship between pottery and its constituent raw materials is not as obvious as w first supposed. The article concludes with an alternative approach to compositional analysis th is more in line with the realities of real-world pottery production. FEW ANALYTICAL APPROACHES HIGHLIGHT the problems of relating human to its material residues more than the compositional analysis of pottery. For arch ologists, the problem of compositional analysis consists of relating the chemical com sition of an artifact to the behavior of its producer. Unfortunately, the elemental c position of pottery (like that obtained from instrumental neutron activation analysi ductively coupled plasma spectroscopy, or atomic absorption spectroscopy) is difficu relate to potters' behavior because the relationship between the chemical elements in pottery and the potters' behavior is not obvious. In order to relate the chemical elements in the pottery and potters' behavior, arch ologists and "archeometrists" assume that the ceramic composition reflects the c sition of the source raw materials (usually clay). This "commonsense" assumption wo well with some natural materials unaltered by humans (e.g., obsidian), but the co chemical and behavioral factors involved in pottery production can affect the simple lationship between the chemical elements in the pottery and the supposed source of constituent raw materials. With ceramics, the concept of "source" is thus probl because "source" can be thought of as a single mine, a single widespread clay str all clays in a single drainage, a single community of potters, or perhaps even a grou such communities. One way to evaluate the assumption relating the elemental co sition of pottery and behavior is to analyze materials from living communities of po