Current Table of Contents

• Editorial: The First 50 Years
  Current Anthropology, Volume 50, Issue 6, Page 753, December 2009. <br/>
• Anthropological Currents
  Current Anthropology, Volume 50, Issue 6, Page 755-756, December 2009. <br/>
• Current Applications
  Current Anthropology, Volume 50, Issue 6, Page 757, December 2009. <br/>
• Attachment and Cooperation in Religious Groups: An Example of a Mechanism for Cultural Group Selection
  Current Anthropology, Volume 50, Issue 6, Page 759-785, December 2009. <br/> Bowlby proposed that “the psychological problem of ensuring persistent co‐operative behaviour” in groups was solved by emotional valuation of the group leader, group policy, or the group itself derived from the infant‐mother attachment relationship. He described how an emotionally valued relationship with a group leader, which is rooted in early attachments, can motivate an individual to cooperate for the benefit of the group. Bowlby’s insights, studies of attachment relationships with a deity, and the application of multilevel and group selection to cooperation in religious groups together show how attachment to a deity (supernatural agent) could be a mechanism for intragroup cooperation, including the within‐group cooperation required for group selection. As such, it links the attachment system, a pillar of human relationships and personality, to cooperation in groups. We also consider how the attachment system could be a basis for intragroup cooperation generally and compare this possibility to two other theories about human social cooperation, the “tribal social instincts” hypothesis and the evolution of “shared intentionality.”
• Color, Race, and Genomic Ancestry in Brazil: Dialogues between Anthropology and Genetics
  Current Anthropology, Volume 50, Issue 6, Page 787-819, December 2009. <br/> In the contemporary world, “race” narratives are so multifaceted that at times, different views of the concept appear mutually incompatible. In recent decades biologists, especially geneticists, have repeatedly stated that the notion of race does not apply to the human species. On the other hand, social scientists claim that race is highly significant in cultural, historical, and socioeconomic terms because it molds everyday social relations and because it is a powerful motivator for social and political movements based on race differences. In this paper we present the results of an interdisciplinary research project incorporating approaches from genetics and anthropology. Our objective is to explore the interface between information about biology/genetics and perceptions about color/race in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. We argue that the data and interpretation of our research resonate far beyond the local level, stimulating discussion about methodological, theoretical, and political issues of wider national and international relevance. Topics addressed include the complex terminology of color/race classification in Brazil, perceptions about ancestry in the context of ideologies of Brazilian national identity, and the relationship between genetic information about the Brazilian population and a sociopolitical agenda that turns on questions of race and racism.
• Toward a Networks and Boundaries Approach to Early Complex Polities: The Late Shang Case
  Current Anthropology, Volume 50, Issue 6, Page 821-848, December 2009. <br/> The past 10 years have seen a reorientation of archaeological political theory from a focus on neoevolutionary classification and “state origins” to a focus on the operation of ancient polities. This trend, while promising, nonetheless frequently retains problematic habits of earlier approaches, including the tendency to slip into reductionist classificatory exercises. Furthermore, I argue that the naturalized experience of nation‐states and the legacy of modernist political theory form an unexamined yet pernicious influence. In ancient contexts, the reified anachronism of “the state” is better understood in terms of a nexus of networks of power and authority and the imagined political communities with which they articulate. I suggest that both polity networks and polity ideas should then be analyzed in terms of their discursive, practical, and material aspects and the relationships between them. Relatively understudied and still undeservingly peripheral to the generation of ancient political models in archaeology, Shang China will form the basis of a case study in the application of the networks and boundaries approach proposed here. Drawing on archaeological, epigraphic, and transmitted textual sources, I will sketch an outline of Shang political geography, discursive structures, practices of power/authority, networks of capital, and boundaries of political identity.
• Pristine Aborigines or Victims of Progress? The Western Shoshones in the Anthropological Imagination
  Current Anthropology, Volume 50, Issue 6, Page 849-881, December 2009. <br/> In the anthropological literature, the Western Shoshones as presented by Julian Steward loom large as a group of people who adapted as best they could to scarce resources in the high interior desert areas of North America: Utah and Nevada. Steward’s work has become entrenched and enshrined as unassailable, at least from a methodological point of view. I suggest that Steward’s Shoshones are an example of a tradition that has become entrenched in the discipline of anthropology, resulting in its constant replication as a form of particular intellectual authority despite the development of new approaches. Attention is focused on Steward’s actual data and the historical circumstances that produced them. In light of these historical circumstances, it might be more accurate to conceptualize Steward’s Shoshones as “victims of progress” than as a pristine group of hunter‐gather‐foragers. Examination of three cases of Western Shoshone subsistence along the Humboldt River in 1828–1829, Ruby Valley and vicinity in the 1860s, and the mountains and valleys of south‐central Nevada in the 1860s and 1870s supports and illustrates this point.
• Integrating Plant and Animal Data: Delving Deeper into Subsistence: Introduction to the Special Section
  Current Anthropology, Volume 50, Issue 6, Page 883-884, December 2009. <br/>
• Plants and Animals Together: Interpreting Organic Remains from Building 52 at Çatalhöyük
  Current Anthropology, Volume 50, Issue 6, Page 885-895, December 2009. <br/> This paper explores plant and animal distributions inside a Neolithic burned house in order to investigate domestic organization in an early farming society. We use GIS to analyze the spatial distributions of plant and animal remains found inside Building 52 at Çatalhöyük in central Anatolia. We examine how plant and animal stores, food and nonfood materials, and wild and domestic taxa were configured spatially. Results shed light on the logistics of early storage, the importance of economic privacy, and the significance of the “domestic” versus “wild” distinction to early farmers.
• Resource Exploitation at Late Neolithic Domuztepe: Faunal and Botanical Evidence
  Current Anthropology, Volume 50, Issue 6, Page 897-914, December 2009. <br/> Domuztepe, in southeastern Turkey, is one of the largest known Late Neolithic sites in the Near East. Ecofactual remains recovered at Domuztepe indicate that the site’s inhabitants relied on a well‐established mixed economy of domestic plants and animals to sustain the settlement’s large population, which may have peaked at more than 1,500 people. Evidence of a long and continuous occupation of this site attests to a successful agropastoral economy, even though Domuztepe was situated at the intersection of uplands, an alluvial plain, and marshy zones, an environment not traditionally considered ideal for agriculture. Integrated faunal and botanical analyses explore the diversity of domestic and wild resources used by the site’s inhabitants. The typical suite of Near Eastern domesticates dominates the excavated assemblage, with sheep, goats, cattle, pigs, and cereals prominent. In addition to a nutritional role, these food products were used for clothing, storage, and construction and had symbolic importance in ritual and prestige. Combined archaeobiological data point to a seasonal cycle of activities.
• From Food and Fuel to Farms and Flocks: The Integration of Plant and Animal Remains in the Study of the Agropastoral Economy at Gordion, Turkey
  Current Anthropology, Volume 50, Issue 6, Page 915-924, December 2009. <br/> The site of Gordion, Turkey, provides a case study of the integrated use of archaeobiological data. Associations between botanical and faunal remains suggest a continuum of land‐use practices. At one end, high ratios of the seeds of wild plants versus cultivated cereal grains (calculated as count/weight) and high proportions of the bones of sheep, goat, and deer are signatures of a subsistence economy focused on pastoral production. At the other, low wild/cereal ratios along with high proportions of the bones of cattle, pig, and hare indicate an economy more focused on agriculture. Based on the millennium‐long sequence analyzed, the most sustainable land use around the ancient settlement emphasized pastoral production; only during the wealthy Middle Phrygian period did high population support greater reliance on agriculture.
• A Holistic Approach to Examining Ancient Agriculture: A Case Study from the Bronze and Iron Age Near East
  Current Anthropology, Volume 50, Issue 6, Page 925-936, December 2009. <br/> Agriculture provided the foundation for the development and sustenance of Bronze and Iron Age civilizations in the Near East, yet remarkably little is known about how its practice varied across the region at this time. Archaeobotany and zooarchaeology have been used independently to study ancient agriculture, but there is a dire need for a more comprehensive and holistic approach, one that integrates the two data sets and better represents the reality of food production. Correspondence analysis can be an effective tool for quantitatively integrating regional Bronze and Iron Age plant and animal data spanning Syria and Jordan. Distinct regional patterns of food production and wild resource use are evident. The main variable driving this trend is available moisture. Theoretically, the method outlined here can be applied to any region and time period.
• Following Sol Tax
  Current Anthropology, Volume 50, Issue 6, Page 937-938, December 2009. <br/>
• An Editor’s Tale
  Current Anthropology, Volume 50, Issue 6, Page 939-940, December 2009. <br/>
• How Editing Current Anthropology Set My Goals as Wenner‐Gren President
  Current Anthropology, Volume 50, Issue 6, Page 941-943, December 2009. <br/>
• Covering Anthropology
  Current Anthropology, Volume 50, Issue 6, Page 945-948, December 2009. <br/>
• A Social Experiment: Sol Tax, Paul Fejos, and the Origins of Current Anthropology
  Current Anthropology, Volume 50, Issue 6, Page 949-954, December 2009. <br/>
• Current Anthropology as an International Forum
  Current Anthropology, Volume 50, Issue 6, Page 955-958, December 2009. <br/>
• The Fission‐Fusion Concept
  Current Anthropology, Volume 50, Issue 6, Page 959, December 2009. <br/>
• Regarding “Fertility and Agriculture Accentuate Sex Differences in Dental Caries Rates” The Role of Vitamin D
  Current Anthropology, Volume 50, Issue 6, Page 961-962, December 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: Of Things That Would Never Be Quite Expressed (Jackson's Excursions)
  Current Anthropology, Volume 50, Issue 6, Page 963-964, December 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: Open and Free (Kelty's Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software)
  Current Anthropology, Volume 50, Issue 6, Page 964-965, December 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: The Politics of Andean Head Taking (Arnold and Hastorf's Heads of State: Icons, Power and Politics in the Ancient and Modern Andes)
  Current Anthropology, Volume 50, Issue 6, Page 965-967, December 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: In the Society of Story (Graeber's Lost People: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar)
  Current Anthropology, Volume 50, Issue 6, Page 967-968, December 2009. <br/>
• Book Review: “Forever Foreign”: Made in Germany (Mandel's Cosmopolitan Anxieties: Turkish Challenges to Citizenship and Belonging in Germany)
  Current Anthropology, Volume 50, Issue 6, Page 968-970, December 2009. <br/>
• Books Received
  Current Anthropology, Volume 50, Issue 6, Page 970-972, December 2009. <br/>