Dental Modification and the Expansion and Manipulation of Mesoamerican Identity into Northwest Mexico

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James T. Watson ◽  
Cristina García M.
Keyword(s):  
Settlement System ◽  
The West ◽  
Northwest Mexico ◽  
Regional Center ◽  
Trading Partners ◽  
Cranial Modification ◽  
Material Evidence

This chapter characterizes dental modification in a skeletal sample dating to the Middle (A.D. 500–1200) and Late Ceramic (A.D. 1200–1600) periods from Sonora, Mexico. Fifteen individuals from El Cementerio display dental modification including ablation and tooth filing. Dental modification may be a biocultural trait that spread from Mesoamerica along the West Mexican coast around A.D. 1000. El Cementerio represents the furthest northern expanse of this practice within Mexico, but the site is completely devoid of material evidence for Mesoamerican influence. The site may be a regional center for a settlement system stretching the middle Rio Yaqui. Some residents, influenced by trading partners along the coast, appear to have adopted dental modification (and cranial modification) as a way to manipulate their identity to visibly connect to more influential groups along the West Mexican coast and support the management of status within the middle Rio Yaqui area.

scholarly journals Past as the Other – The Other as Past

2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-268
Author(s):  
Staša Babić
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Colonial Expansion ◽  
The Times ◽  
Modern Identity ◽  
Material Evidence ◽  
Written Sources

Modern academic disciplines of anthropology, history and archaeology are founded in the cultural, social, political context of the 18th and 19th centuries, at the times of the colonial expansion of the West European countries. Although demarcated by the objects of their study ("primitive societies", the past according to written sources, or material evidence), all these disciplines are grounded in the need to distinguish and strengthen the modern identity of the Europeans as opposed to the Others in space and time.

The Dahomean Middleman System, 1727–c. 1818

1987 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Ross
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
West African ◽  
The West ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Supply Problem ◽  
West African Coast ◽  
African Coast ◽  
Trading Partners

During the first quarter of the eighteenth century, European merchants bought more slaves in the Bight of Benin than on any other part of the West African coast. From c. 1720 until 1727 much of their buying was concentrated in Savi, the capital of a small Aja state called Whydah. When the Dahomeans overran Savi in 1727 they stopped the inland slave suppliers from travelling to the coast, prevented the local Hueda from going inland to collect slaves, and insisted that the Europeans bought slaves only from Dahomean dealers. In an attempt to make sure that the Europeans had nothing more to do with their former trading partners the Dahomeans burned the factories in Savi and forced their European occupants to retire to Grehue, Savi's port, a spot on the coast where the Europeans maintained a number of fortified warehouses.The middleman policy did not at first operate satisfactorily. There were two reasons for this. The first was that the Dahomeans were, in practice, unable to prevent the Europeans from continuing to trade with the Hueda. The second was that the inland suppliers refused to sell slaves to Savi's conquerors. The Dahomeans solved their ‘coastal’ problem in the 1740S by placing a garrison in Grehue. This garrison kept the exiled Hueda at bay and held the Europeans in what amounted to open captivity. The Dahomeans were never able completely to solve their ‘supply’ problem. In the 1730s and 1740S the inland merchants took their slaves to ports which opened up on the Bight to the east of Grehue. Only in the 1750s and 1760s did they channel substantial numbers of slaves through Dahomey. In the last decades of the century they again boycotted the Dahomean market. Dahomey therefore prospered as a middleman state only between c. 1748 and c. 1770.An examination of their eighteenth century trading suggests that the Dahomeans were a slave-raiding community whose members realised in 1727 that they would soon run out of fresh raiding grounds. They appear to have introduced their middleman policy in an attempt to ensure that they would continue to profit from slave trading even after they had ceased to be able to take large numbers of captives themselves. Although the policy was by no means a complete success, it was important in that it seems to have led the Dahomeans to begin placing garrisons in the territories they ravaged. It appears, in fact, to have been the pursuit of their middleman goals that led them to begin creating the often described nineteenth century ‘greater’ Dahomean state. The middleman programme ceased to be of much importance after c. 1818, when the fall of Oyo enabled the Dahomeans to resume raiding widely in unexploited territory.

Power, Patronage, and Memory in Early Islam

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World History ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
The West ◽  
Indus Valley ◽  
Fresh Material ◽  
State Apparatus ◽  
Early Islam ◽  
The World ◽  
Material Evidence ◽  
New Religion

The Umayyads, the first Islamic dynasty, ruled over the largest empire that the world had seen, stretching from Spain in the west to the Indus Valley and Central Asia in the east. They played a crucial rule in the articulation of the new religion of Islam during the seventh and eighth centuries, shaping its public face, artistic expressions, and the state apparatus that sustained it. The present volume brings together a collection of essays that bring new light to this crucial period of world history, with a focus on the ways in which Umayyad elites fashioned and projected their image and how these articulations, in turn, mirrored their times. These themes are approached through a wide variety of sources, from texts through art and archaeology to architecture, with new considerations of old questions and fresh material evidence that make the intersections and resonances between different fields of historical study come alive.

Tyre and its Colonial Expansion

2019 ◽  
pp. 73-87
Author(s):  
María Eugenia Aubet Semmler
Keyword(s):  
Small Groups ◽  
The West ◽  
Colonial Expansion ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Material Evidence ◽  
Radiometric Dates

The material evidence recovered in the last years in archaic contexts in the West, as well as new radiometric dates obtained in some of the Phoenician colonies, urge us to revise periodically some hypotheses about the origin, aims, and first stages of the Phoenician expansion into the Mediterranean. The first Phoenician expeditions to the West must have been composed of small groups of merchants, accompanied by genuine experts in smelting, mining, and metallurgy. These were specialists in mining and metallurgical technologies, capable of recognizing the potential of these territories (particularly rich in mining resources) and technically prepared to assess, alloy, and smelt metals from which copper, silver, tin, and gold were obtainable.

To Russia with love

Focaal ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 (70) ◽  
pp. 26-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Demant Frederiksen
Keyword(s):  
Black Sea ◽  
Online Dating ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Black Sea ◽  
Port City ◽  
The West ◽  
Geographical Mobility ◽  
Regional Center ◽  
Autonomous Republic ◽  
Gain Access

Among young unemployed or underemployed men in the port city of Batumi, the regional center of the Autonomous Republic of Ajara in Georgia, the Black Sea is a social and imaginary horizon that signifies both geographical mobility and confinement. Since Georgia gained independence, Batumi went from being a Soviet borderland to being an opening to the West. However, due to visa regulations, “the West”—and the opportunities associated with it—has long been limited to the other Black Sea countries of Turkey and Ukraine. Following the August 2008 war, Russia, although being a much more desirable destination, became out of reach for the majority of these men. Through the notions of social and geographical horizons, this article argues that the young men, despite their sense of confinement, manage to forge alternative connections to Russia via Internet sites, where the online dating of Russian women was used as a means to gain access to Russia via marriage.

scholarly journals The strongholds of Russian coastal borderlands: economic dynamics amid geopolitical turbulence

Baltic Region ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 89-104
Author(s):  
A. G. Druzhinin
Keyword(s):  
World Ocean ◽  
Coastal Region ◽  
Government Support ◽  
Economic Systems ◽  
Settlement System ◽  
Economic Diversification ◽  
The West ◽  
Economic Dynamics ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
The Russian Federation

In the 21st century, the World Ocean is becoming a key factor in global socio-economic dynamics and a geoeconomic and geopolitical priority of many countries. The Russian Federation, whose economy, infrastructure, and settlement system have been gravitating towards the sea since the late 1990s, is no exception. This article aims to identify and provide a conceptual framework for the phenomenon of Russia’s coastal borderlands and their constituent ‘strongholds’. It also explores the factors and features of the economic dynamics of the coastal borderlands amid the post-2014 geopolitical turbulence. Economic and statistical methods are used to highlight the irregularity of the economic and settlement patterns across Russia’s coastal borderlands, in their water and land areas. It is shown that Russian economic and military activities have clustered there to create 14 ‘strongholds’, including two emerging ones. The current confrontation between Russia and the West is accompanied by the country’s growing maritime presence, particularly in its western borderlands, the revitalisation and expansion of its ‘strongholds’, and economic diversification. The economic systems of the country’s leading coastal region have proven to be highly resistant to geopolitical turbulence; this is partly explained by government support.

Africa in the Atlantic World, C.1760 – C. 1840

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Law
Keyword(s):  
West African ◽  
Diplomatic Relations ◽  
Sahara Desert ◽  
The West ◽  
Transatlantic Slave Trade ◽  
The Third ◽  
Atlantic Trade ◽  
Trading Partners ◽  
History Of ◽  
Different Parts

The transatlantic slave trade peaked in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, when more than 80,000 slaves annually were being shipped from Africa for the Americas. This overshadowed the older-established trade in slaves northwards from West Africa across the Sahara Desert to the Muslim world, which was probably under 10,000 annually. Despite the long history of commerce, direct European involvement in Africa remained limited. In contrast to the Americas, European colonial occupation of African territory was minimal before the later nineteenth century. Some African states maintained diplomatic relations with their trading partners across the Atlantic. The operation of the Atlantic trade had the effect of linking up different parts of Africa with each other, as well as with Europe and the Americas. The autonomous (or northern-oriented) character of the West African historical process might seem to be self-evidently illustrated by one of the major developments of this period, a series of jihads, or ‘Islamic Revolutions’, in which Muslim clerics seized power from existing ruling groups.

scholarly journals Reforming WTO Conflict Management: Why and How to Improve the Use of ‘Specific Trade Concerns’

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 817-839
Author(s):  
Robert Wolfe
Keyword(s):  
Conflict Management ◽  
World Trade Organization ◽  
World Trade ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Settlement System ◽  
Trading Partners ◽  
Working Practices ◽  
Phytosanitary Measures ◽  
Dispute Settlement System

ABSTRACT With its dispute settlement system in peril, the role of the World Trade Organization in mitigating commercial conflict is more important than ever, but its working practices need reform. The Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures and Technical Barriers to Trade committees have developed a mechanism for members to raise ‘specific trade concerns’ about the laws, regulations, and practices of their trading partners, both proposed and already implemented. These specific trade concerns can mitigate sources of friction and help avoid recourse to formal dispute settlement. This article assesses experience with specific trade concerns and analyzes suggestions for reform of the process and its extension to all World Trade Organization committees. The important World Trade Organization reform question is whether procedural changes in Geneva can make specific trade concerns more effective for all members while facilitating enhanced participation by members who do not now make full use of the possibilities that such procedures offer.

China's role in WTO dispute settlement

2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 555-589 ◽  
Author(s):  
MATTHEW KENNEDY
Keyword(s):  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Future Challenge ◽  
Settlement System ◽  
Wto Dispute Settlement ◽  
Trading Partners ◽  
Dispute Settlement System

AbstractThis study describes and analyzes trends in China's participation in the WTO dispute settlement system during the first ten years of its membership. China has used the system to challenge differentiated treatment of its exports by its two largest trading partners, a theme related to sensitive aspects of its accession negotiations. The study reviews the record of China's conformity to WTO dispute settlement practices, and its contribution to their development, and finds that China is playing the role of a ‘system-maintainer’. The study concludes by considering a future challenge that the emergence of this large new player may pose for the system.

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