Looting

About: Looting is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1134 publications have been published within this topic receiving 15618 citations. The topic is also known as: plundering & pillaging.

The Archaeology of Death and Burial

Abstract: The archaeology of death and burial is central to our attempts to understand vanished societies. Through the remains of funerary rituals we learn not only about prehistoric people's attitudes toward death and the afterlife but also about their culture, social system, and world view. This ambitious book reviews the latest research in this huge and important field and describes the sometimes controversial interpretations that have led to our understanding of life and death in the distant past. Mike Parker Pearson draws on case studies from different periods and locations throughout the world--the Paleolithic in Europe and the Near East, the Mesolithic in northern Europe, and the Iron Age in Asia and Europe. He also uses evidence from precontact North America, ancient Egypt, and Madagascar, as well as from the Neolithic and Bronze Age in Britain and Europe, to reconstruct vivid pictures of both ancient and not so ancient funerary rituals. He describes the political and ethical controversies surrounding human remains and the problems of reburial, looting, and war crimes. The Archaeology of Death and Burial provides a unique overview and synthesis of one of the most revealing fields of research into the past, which creates a context for several of archaeology's most breathtaking discoveries--from Tutankhamen to the Ice Man. This volume will find an avid audience among archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, and others who have a professional interest in, or general curiosity about, death and burial.

War before civilization

Abstract: The myth of the peace-loving "noble savage" is persistent and pernicious. Indeed, for the last fifty years, most popular and scholarly works have agreed that prehistoric warfare was rare, harmless, unimportant, and, like smallpox, a disease of civilized societies alone. Prehistoric warfare, according to this view, was little more than a ritualized game, where casualties were limited and the effects of aggression relatively mild. Lawrence Keeley's groundbreaking War Before Civilization offers a devastating rebuttal to such comfortable myths and debunks the notion that warfare was introduced to primitive societies through contact with civilization (an idea he denounces as "the pacification of the past"). Building on much fascinating archeological and historical research and offering an astute comparison of warfare in civilized and prehistoric societies, from modern European states to the Plains Indians of North America, War Before Civilization convincingly demonstrates that prehistoric warfare was in fact more deadly, more frequent, and more ruthless than modern war. To support this point, Keeley provides a wide-ranging look at warfare and brutality in the prehistoric world. He reveals, for instance, that prehistorical tactics favoring raids and ambushes, as opposed to formal battles, often yielded a high death-rate; that adult males falling into the hands of their enemies were almost universally killed; and that surprise raids seldom spared even women and children. Keeley cites evidence of ancient massacres in many areas of the world, including the discovery in South Dakota of a prehistoric mass grave containing the remains of over 500 scalped and mutilated men, women, and children (a slaughter that took place a century and a half before the arrival of Columbus). In addition, Keeley surveys the prevalence of looting, destruction, and trophy-taking in all kinds of warfare and again finds little moral distinction between ancient warriors and civilized armies. Finally, and perhaps most controversially, he examines the evidence of cannibalism among some preliterate peoples. Keeley is a seasoned writer and his book is packed with vivid, eye-opening details (for instance, that the homicide rate of prehistoric Illinois villagers may have exceeded that of the modern United States by some 70 times). But he also goes beyond grisly facts to address the larger moral and philosophical issues raised by his work. What are the causes of war? Are human beings inherently violent? How can we ensure peace in our own time? Challenging some of our most dearly held beliefs, Keeley's conclusions are bound to stir controversy.

Metaphors Matter: Disaster Myths, Media Frames, and Their Consequences in Hurricane Katrina

Abstract: It has long been understood by disaster researchers that both the general public and organizational actors tend to believe in various disaster myths. Notions that disasters are accompanied by looting, social disorganization, and deviant behavior are examples of such myths. Research shows that the mass media play a significant role in promulgating erroneous beliefs about disaster behavior. Following Hurricane Katrina, the response of disaster victims was framed by the media in ways that greatly exaggerated the incidence and severity of looting and lawlessness. Media reports initially employed a “civil unrest” frame and later characterized victim behavior as equivalent to urban warfare. The media emphasis on lawlessness and the need for strict social control both reflects and reinforces political discourse calling for a greater role for the military in disaster management. Such policy positions are indicators of the strength of militarism as an ideology in the United States.

New Ethnicities: Literary Representations of West Indians in London, 1948-2001

Abstract: Now I think that being is in a state of perpetual change. And what I call creolisation is the very sign of that change. In creolisation, you can change, you can be with the Other, you can change with the Other while being yourself, you are not one, you are multiple . . .- Edouard GlissantIN THE AFTERMATH OF THE LONDON RIOTS of August 2011, British historian David Starkey provoked a storm of public outrage when, in a discussion on BBC Television on the cause of the riots, he stated that "the problem is that whites have become black . . . What has happened is that a substantial section of the chavs have become black."1 Starkey's comment was condemned by black and white pundits alike, primarily because his attempt to explain the participation of white youths - "chavs" - in the rioting and looting invoked racist stereotypes of unruly/riotous black youth.2 Furthermore, Starkey's reference to chavs, a white, urban working-class subculture whose male members adopt so-called gangster fashions and street slang, also invokes the menacing, stereotypical spectre of black male criminality, thought to influence the style and behaviours of chavs.Louise Bennett's poem "Colonization in Reverse", written in the 1950s, commented satirically and prophetically on the influential presence of West Indians who emigrated to Britain in the years following the end of World War II.3 Her observations in this poem anticipated Starkey's remarks by several decades. This essay, focusing on literary representations of West Indians in London, examines the implications of the surprising convergence of views expressed by Starkey and by Bennett, specifically their allusions to what Starkey described as the "blackening" of white Britons, and what Bennett described as "colonization in reverse".Under consideration is the high period of twentieth-century West Indian immigration, bracketed in the West Indian literature of immigration by Samuel Selvon's 1956 novel The Lonely Londoners4 and Zadie Smith's 2001 novel White Teeth.5 In the intervening forty-five years, a canon of West Indian writing, as well as other creative expressions, emerged, with representations of immigration experiences that included arrival, the embattled process of settlement and the struggle for social acceptance, and the particular challenges of the second generation.Drawing on representations of relations between West Indian immigrants and British natives in literature published in the latter half of the twentieth century, this essay focuses on two broad phases of West Indian immigration, settlement, and social interaction with Britons in London, and comments on developments that would support Starkey's and Bennett's claims. The first period spans 1948, the year the passenger ship the HMT Empire Windrush arrived at Southampton, to 1981, the year of the Brixton and Tottenham uprisings, which marked a turning point in black politics in London and in the country as a whole. In the phase that followed, 1981-2001, black identities forged in the preceding decades by the processes of settlement, adaptation and inter-racial relationships - identities categorised by Stuart Hall as new ethnicities - emerged, to be embraced and consolidated by some second-, thirdand even first-generation West Indians, or rejected by others who cleaved to a remembered, rather than lived West Indianness.6To elucidate observations derived from the creative literature, this essay also draws on contemporaneous criticism produced by British scholars in the disciplines of cultural studies and postcolonial studies, as well as migration studies, and on theories of creolisation from the disciplines of sociology and history.The postwar periodThe first wave of West Indian migrants comprised predominantly young men escaping economic hardship at home by responding to the promise of jobs in the postwar reconstruction of London. But by the late 1950s, women were arriving in increasingly greater numbers to take jobs in the new National Health Service hospitals and on London transport. …

On Defining the Cultural Heritage

Abstract: Examples can be found from ancient times of concern for the protection of cultural artefacts 1 and early legislation to protect monuments and works of art first appeared in Europe in the 15th century. 2 Cultural heritage was first addressed in international law in 1907 3 and a body of international treaties and texts for its protection has been developed by Unesco and other intergovernmental organisations since the 1950’s. The 1954 Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict 4 of Unesco (henceforth the “Hague Convention”) is the earliest of these modern international texts and was developed in great part in response to the destruction and looting of monuments and works of art during the Second World War. It grew out of a feeling that action to prevent their deterioration or destruction was one responsibility of the emerging international world order and an element in reconciliation and the prevention of future conflicts. International law relating to the protection of cultural heritage thus began with comparatively narrow objectives, the protection of cultural property in time of war.