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Italy opened the doors of its universities to female students in 1875. The general view was that very few women were clever enough to obtain a degree, so they would not threaten social stability. Female professors would be even rarer -- a few exceptional "male" women. Access to the professions was impossible in the case of the legal profession, or limited in terms of medicine. In this context, where both Catholics and Positivists opposed women's careers, seeing them as incompatible with motherhood and marriage, five women managed to enter the academic world as unsalaried lecturers: Giuseppina Cattani (1887, Pathology), Paolina Schiff (1891/1893, German literature and language), Rina Monti (1899, Anatomy and Comparative Physiology), Teresa Labriola (1901, Philosophy of Law) and Maria Montessori (1904, Anthropology). With archival documents and other contemporary texts, this paper reconstructs who these women were and the many difficulties they faced in academic life. Four of them were emancipationists and did not marry. These choices debarred them from pursuing a full academic career. Only Monti, who had a family and took no active part in female propaganda, managed to become a full professor in 1911, the first woman in Italy to do so.

Drawing on fieldwork in a public residential facility for eating disorders in central Italy, the paper examines the relational temporalities of therapeutics by looking at how time affects treatment at the intersection of professional and family care practices. In arguing that 'chronic cases' put into question the specific kind of kinship care that is at the basis of treatment, the paper contributes to the anthropological literature on eating disorders by bringing time under the analytical lens, and to the literature on 'chronicity' by complicating simplified assumptions about structural care problems. In addition, the paper draws on and goes beyond anthropological works that have highlighted the potentially harmful side of kinship - including those that have explored how kinship can be framed as a source of mental distress and at the same time as a therapeutic tool. Kinship as a therapeutic tool here becomes risky because professionals need to borrow from kinship practices in their own work with patients, balancing those with the necessary clinical detachment. The paper shows that the time chronic patients need in residential treatment generates a particularly complex mix between what is seen as 'functional' and what is seen as 'dysfunctional' in kinship care, because the 'efficacy' of the kinship work that is at the basis of treatment rests on that being partial and temporary. Long term care in the facility complicates what otherwise allows clinical detachment: the treatment team ends up literally substituting the patient's family, with professional and family care mixing 'too much' with one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the anthropological conception of the first modern Italian anthropologist, Paolo Mantegazza (1831-1910). We will begin by contextualizing the status of anthropology in Italy during the second half of the 19th century. Subsequently, we will delve into some of the inspirations that led the Italians to have such a multifaceted conception of the discipline. Next, we will outline the content of this approach and clarify the meaning of "omnicomprehensive science." From there, we will come to understand the reason for the variety of interests of the anthropologist, who aimed to study the human being in all aspects of life. We will then mention the moral objective present in his professional journey: through an understanding of the complexity of human life, the anthropologist wanted to contribute to the progress and well-being of society; in other words, to "living well.", (© 2024 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Casualisation takes different forms in different academic contexts, from the "adjunctification" of teaching in the U.S.A. to precarious grant-funded postdoc positions common in Europe and the U.K. and the efforts to introduce other forms of temporary academic employment in New Zealand (Shore and Davidson 2014) and Australia (Barcan 2014). Seeking to contribute to these and other current discussions on the future of research and higher education in the era of privatisation and funding cuts, Hana Cervinkova and Karolina Follis convened the panel "Anthropology as a Vocation and Occupation," held on August 3, 2014 at the 13th Biennial Conference of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) in Tallinn, Estonia. The goals of the panel, as stated in the Conference Programme, were as follows. "(1) On behalf of EASA, we seek to understand how our members who fall into the early-career category view their current career prospects; (2) Drawing on current debates on the future of research and higher education under conditions of austerity, digitalisation and casualisation of academic labour, we seek to stimulate an exchange that would examine those international concerns from a perspective specific to European anthropology; (3) We hope to learn whether EASA itself has a role to play assisting early-career anthropologists as they navigate both the available and the yet-to-be-created (or discovered) opportunities for anthropologists in Europe today" (EASA 2014: 98). The overall findings were that in the current academic environment early-career anthropologists (advanced PhD students, postdocs and junior lecturers) are facing a set of external conditions which imperil the pursuit of anthropology as a vocation and an occupation. This article offers a detailed account of specific positions that emerged in the course of the panel discussion, as well as a list of suggestion for the EASA Executive Committee.

Recognizing the central role of mental health in global health and affirming the complexity of the universalization of care policy, this paper discusses aspects of global mental health in Brazil and Italy - two countries that are a potential reference for exchange between the global North and South. Using ethnographic and action research methodologies, we conducted a study of a virtual community of practice composed of Brazilians and Italians interested in community mental health care. The results are presented in scenes that provide insights for the international debate in three categories: the doctor-centered approach to care; the institutionalization of care and medicalization of suffering; and the contribution of community practices and non-specialized local knowledge. The locally situated scenes cast light on globally shared critical knots, elucidating a plural set of relationships that run through work processes and mental health care. The sharing of knowledge and experiences highlight what should be universalized: opportunities for horizontal exchange, rather than the production of national identities that radiate universalizing practices and policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the presentation of two case studies this paper aims to engage the theoretical debate on the persistence of public space in the contemporary city, and focuses the attention on the way people practice these spaces and on the policies which are regulating their uses. Starting from the description of different ways in which some urban spaces in Rome (Italy) are used by two different communities of people, one mainly composed by immigrants and the other by young city users, and the diverse ways in which their different practices are seen and tolerated, the aim of this paper is to reflect on public spaces. Observing how city users practice public spaces, and analysing the way in which these practices are considered, are particularly exciting perspectives that can offer an interesting vision of the spatial and social reality of the city and of hegemonic relations which govern it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the birth (or rebirth) of Italian medical anthropology around the middle of the 1950s, and its subsequent complex development up to the present. During this fairly long process, the author played a role that was probably of some importance, that of both a direct witness and active participant. Here these developments are briefly reviewed, in an attempt to single out some of the stimuli and the most significant occasions that have happened, their theoretical and methodological reference points, the main lines of research that have been tackled along the way, as well as the ‘social demand’ and the ‘social use’ that have integrated and oriented the practice of the new discipline within the horizon of some of the more general problems of Italian society. In outlining here the profile of and the various events in Italian medical anthropology, this paper takes into account the fact that, although a medical anthropology with that name and the disciplinary set-up that are now internationally attributed to it began in Italy only in the mid-1950s, important lines of research to which we would today attach that name had been undertaken long ago. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper takes an ethnographic journey into Italian-Australian cultural production through an examination of the Italian term for both the flavour and taste of herbs, aroma. Here, I explore the ways in which staple foods and their commensalities engender staple cultural production without necessarily overdetermining the culture produced. Taking the material indeterminacy of culture as a theoretical starting point, I argue that this is the reliable beauty of aroma as well as is its capacity to capture the realities of culture as lived experience. When culture is approached from this direction, stature is returned to ethnographic subjects as people living lives rather than as automatons of cultural form. From this vantage, a theoretical preoccupation with order and structure may be seen to hinder rather than enhance an apprehension of ethnographic fact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to present the identified skeletal collection (by age, sex, cause of death, occupation and preservation state) from the Certosa Cemetery of Bologna (Italy), which was reviewed and checked through a consultation of the cemetery archives. The collection consists of 425 skeletons of individuals (from newborn to 91 years old) who died in Bologna between 1898 and 1944. The personal details associated with the skeletons were cross-checked with the data contained in the cemetery and municipal archives. For each skeleton, the biological profile was assessed using current anthropological methods in order to confirm its correct identification. Four hundred and eighteen skeletons (98.4%), mostly complete and well preserved, are identified at least for sex, and for 95% of these, the age is known. The distribution of sexes in the various age groups is fairly well balanced. The cause of death is known in 93% of the individuals. Approximately 30% of the individuals died from infectious diseases. The occupation is known for more than 92% of the individuals. Most of the women were housewives, while the men were employed in various jobs. The cross-check between archival data with the anthropological analysis of the remains enabled a reliable identification of the skeletons. The sexes and various age groups are well represented, and the sample is substantially uniform as far as geographical origin and socio-economic conditions (lower social classes) are concerned. Thanks to the reliability of the information collected, the Certosa collection is an excellent anthropological tool for the development and validation of osteobiographic methods. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the formation of flexible ideas of kinship to accommodate reform ideologies (antimafia) and collective platforms of work (cooperatives) in Sicily. While the anthropology of cooperatives often shows how coops reproduce family work, assessing how flexible kinship idioms accommodate cooperativisation can reveal how cooperatives are constituted around family life. In the Sicilian antimafia, kinship and work are strictly separated, on paper, for fear of mafia corruption. In actual fact, members of Sicilian antimafia cooperatives experience their merging of family life and antimafia cooperativism as a belonging to ‘antimafia families’. This article explicates the tension between this ethnographic finding and antimafia ideology and policy. Antimafia families provide a backdrop for a cooperativism inclusive of kinship. The analysis shows both how antimafia families are mutually constituted with cooperatives and how cooperatives are embedded in the domestic lives of their members. This cooperative-family interplay can help us bridge conceptual separations between workplace and family life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the "Trieste model" of public psychiatry is one of the most progressive in the world. It was in Trieste, Italy, in the 1970s that the radical psychiatrist, Franco Basaglia, implemented his vision of anti-institutional, democratic psychiatry. The Trieste model put the suffering person-not his or her disorders-at the center of the health care system. The model, revolutionary in its time, began with the "negation" and "destruction" of the traditional mental asylum ('manicomio'). A novel community mental health system replaced the mental institution. To achieve this, the Trieste model promoted the social inclusion and full citizenship of users of mental health services. Trieste has been a collaborating center of the WHO for four decades with a goal of disseminating its practices across the world. This paper illustrates a recent attempt to determine whether the Trieste model could be translated to the city of San Francisco, California. This process revealed a number of obstacles to such a translation. Our hope is that a review of Basaglia's ideas, along with a discussion of the obstacles to their implementation, will facilitate efforts to foster the social integration of persons with mental disorders across the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The recovery of foetal remains is very sporadic in archaeology, especially due the scarce degree of bone mineralisation. This paper presents the singular archaeological discovery of a foetal tile preserving the bone remains, object of our anthropological examination.Materials and Methods: The foetal tile was discovered during an archaeological excavation in a medieval site (Northern Italy). The tile was analysed by CT scan and later, human remains were anthropologically examined.Results: The archaeological investigation revealed a special ritual destined to foetuses while forensic anthropological analysis allowed estimating the gestational age near to 21-24 weeks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to discuss problems concerning the observation and cinematographic description of technical practices. Which meaning should we attribute today to this topic within the present framework of the ethno-anthropological disciplines? Starting from an experience of observation and video documentation of traditional weaving in Sardinia, I propose to define a visual approach based on the principles of cultural technology in some of its recent developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of American Anthropologist is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A multiple deposition burial in a lithic co6 n was found on a hill located in the Campidano valley, in Central South Sardinia (Italy). " The site was used from 1800 BC to 500 AD, the burial seems to be dated to the Roman age (238 BC-470AD). A total of 98 human bones and 3 human teeth were present. Anthropological and paleopathological analyses were made. " The biological profile was defined with standard anthropological methodologies. " The anthropological analysis. A large part of the bones can be referred to as an adult male. Most of the bones display the presence of pathologies, in most cases osteophytosis, the correlation of the same pathologies in contiguous bones indicate that they may belong to the same individual. Very interesting is a possible blade injury in the lateral epicondyle of the right male humerus and a plausible pertrochanteric fracture. " The presence, in the same co6 n, of a small number of individuals, with the presence of one subadult, can't completely exclude that they were members of the same family group. More analyses will be necessary to better understand the context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The abandonment of mountain areas in Europe is a process that started during industrialisation and whose traces are still present nowadays. Initiatives aimed at stopping this decline and preserving the local biological and cultural diversities reflect the crucial issue of fostering sustainable rural development. This article contributes to the ongoing debate in assessing and preserving local ecological knowledge (LEK) in a highly marginalised mountain community in the Piedmontese Apennines to support local development. In so doing, it continues a larger project assessing how local botanical knowledge and landscapes evolve over time, in order to understand in more depth which factors affect how LEK is shaped, eroded, and re-created, and how this could be revitalised. Methods: We compared information about the current gathering and use of local wild plants in the upper Borbera Valley (Carrega Ligure municipality, NW Italy), elicited via 34 in-depth open and semi-structured interviews, with the findings of a field study conducted in the same location, most likely carried out at the end of the 1970s and published in 1981. Results: There were remarkable quantitative and qualitative differences between the two ethnobotanies. The gathering and use of some wild medicinal plants growing in meadows, woodlands, and higher mountain environments (Achillea, Centaurea, Dianthus, Ostrya, Picea, Polygonum, Potentilla, and Thymus) seems to have disappeared, whereas the collection of plants growing in more anthropogenic environments, or possibly promoted via contacts with the "reference" city of Genoa (the largest city close to Carrega and historically the economic and cultural centre to which the valley was mostly connected), has been introduced (i.e. ramsons, safflower, bitter oranges, black trumpets) or reinvigorated (rose petals). This trend corresponds to the remarkable changes in the local landscape ecology and agro-silvo-pastoral system that took place from the first half of the twentieth century, dramatically increasing woodland and secondary vegetation, and decreasing coppices, plantations, grasslands and segregating cultivated land. Conclusion: The findings show a very difficult rearrangement of the LEK, as most of the areas the local actors still know are within their villages, and they no longer have daily experience in the rest of the abandoned woodland landscape (except for mushrooming and gathering chestnuts). This situation can be interpreted in two ways: as the start of the complete abandonment of the valley, or as a starting residual resilience lynchpin, which could possibly inspire new residents if the larger political-economic framework would promote measures for making the survival of the mountain settlements of this municipality possible, and not just a chimera. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: An original case of incomplete (and reasonably fatal) human trepanation is described in this short paper. The diagnosis was made on the cremated remains of a young adult individual who died in Rome, Italy during the 2nd century AD. Clinical Presentation: The trepanation was incomplete, as death occurred quickly due to vascular lesions, according to the anatomic analysis of the bone piece. Comparable trepanation from Roman times are described and related to this case. Conclusion: Even if archaeological, this case highlights the possibility of such a diagnosis on post-fire fragmented bones. Very suggestive lesions of section are of great interest for the history of such a practice during classical Antiquity. Lastly, from a medical and forensic point of view, such a diagnosis may be of interest during any identification process and research for a cause of death during anthropological analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper reports a paleopathological study of a severe neural tube defect in an ancient mummy, more specifically, a meningocele in an Egyptian infant from the XI dynasty (2100–1955B.C.). This is one of the most ancient cases of meningocele in mummified human remains described in paleopathological literature. Prehistoric and early historic examples of severe congenital defects of the vertebral column and neural tube are rare, because of the precarious preservation conditions of ancient human remains. Further, since the majority are only the skeletal remains, paleopathological and paleoepidemiological analysis based on the observation of bones is even more difficult. Hence, it is not easy to investigate this disease in the past in all its complexities and true diffusion. The case presented here is peculiar, since it concerns a mummy with almost all soft tissues preserved, thus allowing us to describe the defect in an infant. Only targeted, minimally invasive examinations were performed. An anthropological investigation with helical CT scan and histological analysis was used to diagnose the defect and identify post-mortem transformation processes. The analyses confirmed the diagnosis of meningocele in an approximately six-month-old infant. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper reports on a case of massive hyperostotic alterations observed in the skeleton of an adult woman from the necropolis of Montescaglioso Belvedere (Basilicata, Southern Italy) attributed to the Enotrian culture and dated to the 6th century BC. Hyperostotic changes involve joints, the vertebral column, and the lower limbs. In particular, the large flowing ossification in both the thoracic (T6-T10) and lumbar (L2-L5) tracts, the sacralization of L5, accompanied by sacroiliac fusion on the left side, and the proliferative bone production on both the metaphyseal portion of the left tibia and the left third metatarsal are described. The vertebral antero-lateral ossification and the sacroiliac fusion support a diagnosis of diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis (DISH), while the flowing bone formation on the lower limbs supports a diagnosis of melorheostosis. The pathological conditions described here were already described in the literature, but this is the first reported case of the coexistence of DISH and the very rare melorheostosis. Furthermore, the skeleton from Montescaglioso Belvedere represents the first case of this disease described for ancient Europe, therefore adding a valuable contribution to the reconstruction of the antiquity and distribution of skeletal dysplasias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An isolated human cranium, dated to the early Eneolithic period, was discovered in 2015 at the top of a vertical shaft in the natural Marcel Loubens gypsum Cave (Bologna area, northern Italy). No other anthropological or archaeological remains were found inside the cave. In other caves of the same area anthropic and funerary use are attested from prehistory to more recent periods. We focused on investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of this individual, since the cranium shows signs of some lesions that appear to be the results of a perimortem manipulation probably carried out to remove soft tissues. Anthropological analyses revealed that the cranium belonged to a young woman. We analysed the taphonomic features and geological context to understand how and why the cranium ended up (accidentally or intentionally) in the cave. The analyses of both the sediments accumulated inside the cranium and the incrustations and pigmentation covering its outer surface suggested that it fell into the cave, drawn by a flow of water and mud, likely from the edges of a doline. The accidental nature of the event is also seemingly confirmed by some post-mortem lesions on the cranium. The comparison with other Eneolithic archaeological sites in northern Italy made it possible to interpret the find as likely being from a funerary or ritual context, in which corpse dismemberment (in particular the displacement of crania) was practiced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines some significant yet little‐known early anthropological achievements in Italy. These include the world's first museum of anthropology, founded in 1869 by Paolo Mantegazza (1831–1910) at Florence (Firenze), Italy, where that same year he also established Italy's (and the world's) first cattedra (university professorship) of anthropology. Mantegazza sought to develop a unified "science of man," with a broad definition of the new discipline that brought together human physiological, ethnographic, and "comparative psychology" collections within his new anthropology museum, later complemented by a companion "psychological" museum. Even though Mantegazza's Florentine school of anthropology ended under Fascism, today the surviving Museum of Anthropology in Florence is still the repository of important ethnographic collections from early Italian traveler‐explorers and other contributors. Their study was an important component of Mantegazza's science, which is receiving new attention by modern Italian anthropologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hafting of stone tools was an important advance in the technology of the Paleolithic. Evidence of hafting in the Middle Paleolithic is growing and is not limited to points hafted on spears for thrusting or throwing. This article describes the identification of adhesive used for hafting on a variety of stone tools from two Middle Paleolithic caves in Latium, Fossellone Cave and Sant’Agostino Cave. Analysis of the organic residue by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry shows that a conifer resin adhesive was used, in one case mixed with beeswax. Contrary to previous suggestions that the small Middle Paleolithic tools of Latium could be used by hand and that hafting was not needed since it did not improve their functionality, our evidence shows that hafting was used by Neandertals in central Italy. Ethnographic evidence indicates that resin, which dries when exposed to air, is generally warmed by exposure to a small fire thus softened to be molded and pushed in position in the haft. The use of resin at both sites suggests regular fire use, as confirmed by moderate frequencies of burnt lithics in both assemblages. Lithic analysis shows that hafting was applied to a variety of artifacts, irrespective of type, size and technology. Prior to our study evidence of hafting in the Middle Paleolithic of Italy was limited to one case only. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about the types of social organization characterizing the pre-Roman Celtic populations of Italy. Here, we explore the funerary variability characterizing the late Iron Age site of Seminario Vescovile (SV: Verona, Italy, 3rd-1st c. BC), and test its possible correlation to diet and relative exposure to developmental stressors. Patterns on funerary treatment (N = 125), δ13C and δ15N (N = 90), and linear enamel hypoplasia (N = 47) from SV are compared, and their possible association with sex and age-at-death further discussed. Results point to the presence at SV of variable funerary customs while at the same time demonstrating a rather homogenous diet and exposure to developmental stressors: funerary treatment is mainly correlated to age-at-death but do not appear to be associated to either isotopic patterns or hypoplasia frequencies. Accordingly, even if some weak social differentiation may have characterized the individuals buried at SV, this was not reflected in markedly differing living conditions. Our study is the first to attempt an exploration of the links between age, sex, funerary variability, and diet in a pre-Roman Celtic community from Italy. While highlighting the potential of a multifaceted approach in bioarcheology, it also points to a series of analytical and theoretical issues relevant when trying to disentangle the cultural and biological dimensions of social differentiation in the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay introduces Anuac's thematic section on Malinowski from two perspectives. The first part looks at Malinowski and Elsie Masson's life in South Tyrol, contemplating the historical-political context of the region and bringing to light the Malinowski family's presence and relations in the local setting. The verandah of the villa in Oberbozen is the starting point for a panoramic look on the land and its people, serving as a frame for a reconsideration of Malinowski. The second part traces the development of Malinowski Forum for Ethnography and Anthropology (MFEA) at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, a project that since 2016 has been bringing to light new knowledge about the Malinowskis' presence in South Tyrol. The Malinowski Forum is the backdrop to a Symposium that stimulated the articles presented here, with the aim of reflecting on ethnography today in terms of its continuities and discontinuities with respect to the canon established by Malinowski nearly a century ago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Annette Weiner used the term 'inalienable possessions' to describe a category of property of fundamental importance in Oceania, and in Europe, from Roman times until the eighteenth century. The archetypal form of this inalienable wealth is the landed estate - the 'immovable property' of Romano-Germanic law. This type of wealth, inherently political and carrying functions we associate with the state, has been historically produced by aristocratic social orders. I argue that classical anthropology missed the opportunity to explore aristocracy as a comparative analytical category. A reexamination of classic ethnographies reveals the importance of both aristocracy and this inalienable power-wealth, even in iconic accounts of 'egalitarian society' such as Evans-Pritchard's study of the Nuer. Further consideration of inalienable property shows it to be central to the early-modern state (Commonwealth) just as it was to the Roman republic (Res Publica), and suggests the possibility of a productive new comparative frame of analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the ethno-biological expedition to the Amazon headed by Ettore Biocca between November 1962 and July 1963. Biocca, a parasitologist by training, assembled a multidisciplinary team to carry out an ethno-biological study of Amazon natives. The expedition work covered the natives' customs, myths, chants, diseases and the hallucinogenic compounds and curare they used, and took into account plants and animals common to the Amazon environment. This article aims to contribute to the understanding of the 20th-century Western approach to the Amazon people and its cultural importance. It sets out to show how Biocca's encyclopaedic work related to the centrality of Amazonia and its peoples in scientific and cultural debates on modernity and Western culture in the 1960s, and how it connects to Cold War anxieties about the disappearance of 'uncorrupted' peoples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Memoria Ethnologica is the property of CJCPCT Maramures and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Using two-wave panel data drawn from the Itagen2 Survey, we analyse the assimilation process of a sample of 11-13-year-old children of immigrants enrolled in Italian junior high schools, comparing them to children whose parents are both Italian. In seeking to adapt the traditional segmented assimilation theory to the Italian context, and using a dynamic and multidimensional approach, we consider four aspects: linguistic preferences, scholastic performance, friendship with peers, and sense of belonging in Italy. We synthesize a crude index of assimilation level, analyse its changes in a 2-year period and define its main determinants. The results demonstrate that generation status (place of birth of the children and of their parents, and length of stay) and the family's socio-economic condition are closely related to assimilation level. These findings provide information useful for a better understanding of these children and their way of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we examine the mandible of Riparo Mezzena a Middle Paleolithic rockshelter in the Monti Lessini (NE Italy, Verona) found in 1957 in association with Charentian Mousterian lithic assemblages. Mitochondrial DNA analysis performed on this jaw and on other cranial fragments found at the same stratigraphic level has led to the identification of the only genetically typed Neanderthal of the Italian peninsula and has confirmed through direct dating that it belongs to a late Neanderthal. Our aim here is to re-evaluate the taxonomic affinities of the Mezzena mandible in a wide comparative framework using both comparative morphology and geometric morphometrics. The comparative sample includes mid-Pleistocene fossils, Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans. This study of the Mezzena jaw shows that the chin region is similar to that of other late Neanderthals which display a much more modern morphology with an incipient mental trigone (e.g. Spy 1, La Ferrassie, Saint-Césaire). In our view, this change in morphology among late Neanderthals supports the hypothesis of anatomical change of late Neanderthals and the hypothesis of a certain degree of interbreeding with AMHs that, as the dating shows, was already present in the European territory. Our observations on the chin of the Mezzena mandible lead us to support a non abrupt phylogenetic transition for this period in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article concerns the changes produced by the introduction of university reform in the Anthropology Department at the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’. It scrutinizes how the reform has been negotiated in relation to local traditions and habits by closely observing the practices of teachers and students, and by listening to and analyzing the narratives they produce. It analyses the relationships between university transformation and epistemic as well as institutional changes in a single discipline and puts forward the crucial question: how is anthropology changing inside the university in change? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, in Italy and other European countries, certain foods have become markers of cultural continuity and economic possibility as various actors negotiate the value of these products. Using the concepts of recontextualization and tournaments of value, this article considers the production of material and symbolic value as it is expressed through the ongoing commoditization and potential transformation of the type of salami made in Bergamo, a town and province in Northern Italy. It focuses on various regimes of value to clarify competing visions of how production, consumption, and modernization are connected, and illuminates not only the process of how a local delicacy gets elevated to the status of gourmet product, but also how authenticity and prestige, which often seem to go hand in hand, become paired. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on the Italian anthropology. Race deconstruction of Calabrians and Bohemians; Italian school of criminal anthropology; Origins of Italian racial science.

The article explores the field of cultural anthropology in Italy. Cultural anthropology is the third discipline known in the country, after ethnology and the history of popular traditions. It is a discipline of which Italian scholars have been interested in. However, this field have a special and somewhat polemical sense in Italy, having come into use in the 1950s to designate a theoretical and topical orientation framed in opposition to that of ethnology. Though it has been named cultural anthropology, this is not institutionally affiliated with physical anthropology or archaeology. Thus, this event has made the anthropologists frequent contributors to political and cultural reviews, newspapers, and national television, instead.

Social archaeologists' ability to make warranted statements about past societies from material remains is conditioned by the social-behavioral models that inform their interpretations. Current rational-actor models, although practical, clearly underconceptualize the complexity of social conduct by overrationalizing it. I offer the provisional outline of a more realistic composite model that conceives of social behavior as following a mode of limited rationality much of the time but also engendering irrationality. I use the model to inform a reanalysis of archaeological patterns in Bronze Age Sardinia. The approach holds important insights for social archaeology in general that include the potentially significant role of normative-cultural traditions in the reproduction of nonrational institutions, the importance of historical trajectories in preconditioning social adaptations, and the importance of structural contradictions in creating opportunities for political ascent in noncentralized societies. The thesis acknowledges remaining difficulties in reconciling concepts of rationality with those of adaptation and function and difficulties arising from its mistaken classification as either universalistic or relativistic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the first Italian congress on the social sciences held at Milan at the beginning of June 1958. The two subjects selected were the relations between the various social sciences and their mutual interdependence, and problems of town and country were not best calculated to provide a basis for effective work. Indeed, both themes were obviously too broad to be discussed usefully in the course of a three-day congress, but the choice was upheld in spite of the drawbacks. The first subject-relations between the various social sciences was suggested by the experience of the Italian Social Science Association. Italian culture has always prided itself on its grounding in history and on the concrete nature of its methods research into precise historical situations, as against the abstractness of the naturalistic sciences. It has also raised history to the level of philosophy, this has led, firstly, to a great confusion of ideas and secondly, to banishing the social sciences completely, with the result that, in regard to many subjects and many fields of practical research, not only in sociology but in anthropology, ethnology. One subject frequently mentioned in the congress was the underlying unity, despite certain disparities, of the social sciences and the importance of closer co-ordination between them.