Daniel Sosna
Daniel obtained his PhD in Anthropology at Florida State University. His early career was focused on researching social organization and mortuary practices of past societies. Daniel’s recent research falls into discard studies and builds methodologically upon ethnography and garbology. His interests include economics and politics of waste, ethics in waste management, multispecies encounters with waste, and resource use. His regional expertise is in Central Europe.
Daniel taught courses at the University of West Bohemia (14 years), Charles, Florida State, and Masaryk Universities. Currently he works as a researcher in the Department of Ecological Anthropology, Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague and serves as institute’s deputy director for evaluation and chair of its board.
Address: Na Florenci 3
110 00 Praha 1
Daniel taught courses at the University of West Bohemia (14 years), Charles, Florida State, and Masaryk Universities. Currently he works as a researcher in the Department of Ecological Anthropology, Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague and serves as institute’s deputy director for evaluation and chair of its board.
Address: Na Florenci 3
110 00 Praha 1
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The whole book is open access here: https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph?docid=b-9781350296664
The whole book is here: https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/55203
disposal? This simple question seems to be easy to answer given
the existence of sophisticated tools for formal modelling of a
range of environmental, economic, social, and political variables
which are supposed to minimize risk, cost, and disequity. There
are, however, more subtle factors that shape waste disposal and
its inscription in landscape. Using examples of two Czech landfills
and drawing upon my ethnographic research of wastescapes, I
examine how history, economic interests, social practices, events,
material indeterminacies, and multispecies encounters took part
in the transformation of these places into loci of ‘strangeness’.
Using a metaphor of magnetism I refocus our attention to a
capacity of strange entities such as garbage, rubble, military
waste, dead bodies, animal farms, and shooting ranges to attract
each other along a spatiotemporal continuum. I argue that
strangeness sticks to places and tends to perpetuate itself
through a series of ‘magnetic’ relations over time. This
magnetism stems from the human propensity to classify and
dispose of entities whose open-endedness is dangerous and must
be controlled through placement. While this process of
placement is often imagined as a management of absence, I
point to a dialectical relationship to the opposite category of
presence as a critical source of magnetism. Waste management,
then, becomes envisioned as part of a more general social
process that keeps the world meaningful.
The analysis of the Pömmelte-Zackmünde samples identified macrofractures that affected mostly the tips of the arrowheads. Snap and step terminating bending fractures dominated. Most scars were small, falling into the interval 1–2 mm, with wide initiation and variable morphology. Striations were infrequent. Most remarkably, our results show that 24 out of 55 arrowheads display evidence of features which are traditionally considered as diagnostic of projectile impact. Polish mostly related to hafting was identified on the surface of approximately half of the samples.
Furthermore, the majority of the arrowheads bear bright spots primarily resulting from post-depositional factors. Extensive post-depositional surface modifications most likely reflect the transport of the arrowheads into the subterranean features at the site.
We offer two competing hypotheses to explain the processes which affected the arrowheads at Pömmelte-Zackmünde. The first one views shooting at the site as evidence of ritual practices associated with public display and social recognition among the warriors. The second one regards shooting as evidence of defence against violent attacks of aggressors and a possible function of the enclosure as a fortification for the community.
In: H. Meller/F. Bertemes, Mensch und Umwelt im Ringheiligtum von Pömmelte-Zackmünde, Salzlandkreis. Forschungsber. des Landesmus. für Vorgesch. Halle 10/III (Halle/Saale 2019), 175-186
household food wasting in rural environment in West Bohemia, Czech Republic. This case study combines waste composition analysis of household waste and ethnographic research in a village conducted
throughout 2013 and 2014. We describe the nature of waste itself, estimate its financial value using a method combining direct data from wasted packaging and retail survey, explore the differences among
the households, interpret local understanding of food, and contribute to the theoretical debates concerning thrift. Our results show low degree of wasting of edible food (7.9 kg corresponding to 13.5 EUR per capita per year) but high variation among the households. Instead of searching for a single-causal explanation we explore a complex set of factors and relationships that shape everyday food-related practices. We approach the local discard practices via the concept of thrift and argue that it should be understood as a multi-dimensional domain that includes economizing via self-denial or creative management of resources, moral discourse entangled with care or responsibility, and social relations that
shape the flows of value.
relationships among burials. The case study of the Early Bronze Age cemetery Rebeˇsovice (Czech Republic) is used to explore the potential of the network approach to explain the contrast between
the center and the periphery of the cemetery. Two hypotheses are proposed to explain this contrast: Chronological and social. The first hypothesis explains the difference between the center and
the periphery as an effect of social standing, while the latter as an effect of time. The data set includes archaeological and biological data from 72 burials. We calculate simple matching distance matrices as a measure of dissimilarity among the burials based on socially and chronologically significant variables and Euclidean matrix as a measure of spatial proximity among pairs of graves. We project the results into geographic space and compare the patterns with the expectations derived from the two research hypotheses. The evaluation of results allows us to reject both hypotheses and formulate a new model of spatial organization based on a few contemporary subsections of the cemetery used by different corporate groups. Finally, the potential of computer-aided modeling of matrices and graphs is discussed in context of other analytical techniques used for the investigation of intra-cemetery mortuary variability.
The whole book is open access here: https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph?docid=b-9781350296664
The whole book is here: https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/55203
disposal? This simple question seems to be easy to answer given
the existence of sophisticated tools for formal modelling of a
range of environmental, economic, social, and political variables
which are supposed to minimize risk, cost, and disequity. There
are, however, more subtle factors that shape waste disposal and
its inscription in landscape. Using examples of two Czech landfills
and drawing upon my ethnographic research of wastescapes, I
examine how history, economic interests, social practices, events,
material indeterminacies, and multispecies encounters took part
in the transformation of these places into loci of ‘strangeness’.
Using a metaphor of magnetism I refocus our attention to a
capacity of strange entities such as garbage, rubble, military
waste, dead bodies, animal farms, and shooting ranges to attract
each other along a spatiotemporal continuum. I argue that
strangeness sticks to places and tends to perpetuate itself
through a series of ‘magnetic’ relations over time. This
magnetism stems from the human propensity to classify and
dispose of entities whose open-endedness is dangerous and must
be controlled through placement. While this process of
placement is often imagined as a management of absence, I
point to a dialectical relationship to the opposite category of
presence as a critical source of magnetism. Waste management,
then, becomes envisioned as part of a more general social
process that keeps the world meaningful.
The analysis of the Pömmelte-Zackmünde samples identified macrofractures that affected mostly the tips of the arrowheads. Snap and step terminating bending fractures dominated. Most scars were small, falling into the interval 1–2 mm, with wide initiation and variable morphology. Striations were infrequent. Most remarkably, our results show that 24 out of 55 arrowheads display evidence of features which are traditionally considered as diagnostic of projectile impact. Polish mostly related to hafting was identified on the surface of approximately half of the samples.
Furthermore, the majority of the arrowheads bear bright spots primarily resulting from post-depositional factors. Extensive post-depositional surface modifications most likely reflect the transport of the arrowheads into the subterranean features at the site.
We offer two competing hypotheses to explain the processes which affected the arrowheads at Pömmelte-Zackmünde. The first one views shooting at the site as evidence of ritual practices associated with public display and social recognition among the warriors. The second one regards shooting as evidence of defence against violent attacks of aggressors and a possible function of the enclosure as a fortification for the community.
In: H. Meller/F. Bertemes, Mensch und Umwelt im Ringheiligtum von Pömmelte-Zackmünde, Salzlandkreis. Forschungsber. des Landesmus. für Vorgesch. Halle 10/III (Halle/Saale 2019), 175-186
household food wasting in rural environment in West Bohemia, Czech Republic. This case study combines waste composition analysis of household waste and ethnographic research in a village conducted
throughout 2013 and 2014. We describe the nature of waste itself, estimate its financial value using a method combining direct data from wasted packaging and retail survey, explore the differences among
the households, interpret local understanding of food, and contribute to the theoretical debates concerning thrift. Our results show low degree of wasting of edible food (7.9 kg corresponding to 13.5 EUR per capita per year) but high variation among the households. Instead of searching for a single-causal explanation we explore a complex set of factors and relationships that shape everyday food-related practices. We approach the local discard practices via the concept of thrift and argue that it should be understood as a multi-dimensional domain that includes economizing via self-denial or creative management of resources, moral discourse entangled with care or responsibility, and social relations that
shape the flows of value.
relationships among burials. The case study of the Early Bronze Age cemetery Rebeˇsovice (Czech Republic) is used to explore the potential of the network approach to explain the contrast between
the center and the periphery of the cemetery. Two hypotheses are proposed to explain this contrast: Chronological and social. The first hypothesis explains the difference between the center and
the periphery as an effect of social standing, while the latter as an effect of time. The data set includes archaeological and biological data from 72 burials. We calculate simple matching distance matrices as a measure of dissimilarity among the burials based on socially and chronologically significant variables and Euclidean matrix as a measure of spatial proximity among pairs of graves. We project the results into geographic space and compare the patterns with the expectations derived from the two research hypotheses. The evaluation of results allows us to reject both hypotheses and formulate a new model of spatial organization based on a few contemporary subsections of the cemetery used by different corporate groups. Finally, the potential of computer-aided modeling of matrices and graphs is discussed in context of other analytical techniques used for the investigation of intra-cemetery mortuary variability.
and the second one is the tension between national archaeological traditions and internationalisation of
archaeological practise. We argue that Central Europe is well suited for the exchange of ideas related to archaeological theory and methodology because of its geography and history. It is the space where various archaeologies and archaeologists can meet, present their arguments, negotiate their theoretical positions, and produce new knowledge.
people not only in hospitals but also in retirement
homes, supermarkets, and public transportation.
Synthetic materials, cursed for poisoning the planet’s
oceans in the form of microplastics few months ago,
became unacknowledged heroes almost overnight.
For how long will their rescue aura work? It is time to
think about the consequences of global anti-Covid-
19 policies in terms of their environmental impact.
The case we want to consider is that of a face mask,
one of the emblems of the current pandemics.