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The central topic of the paper is the humoristic production during the COVID-19 pandemic. The chief focus is on the main representations of the eldest members of the society during this dramatic period, when they were declared to be the most endangered, but also the ones who endanger others by their vulnerability. The research was limited to the first year of the critical period, when the state of emergency was declared, from March 15th to May 6th 2020, with the aim to observe the phenomenon of old age in the local humoristic discourse from the synchronic perspective. In this manner, it was possible to map the different ways of making jokes on old age. The analytic material, on the basis of which the conclusions were drawn, included both the traditional and contemporary modes of humour in which the elder people are the main actors. It was thus possible to discern which characteristics and actions are ascribed to the elder in the traditional, verbal jokes, as well as in the contemporary multi-media humoristic contents. The material included the oral jokes on the elder (verbal jokes on “grandmas and grandpas” on the Internet) as well as Internet memes with the theme of the old age, that appeared and circulated in Serbia during the period under analysis. The paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the particular forms of making jokes in the key of the so-called fourth ageism, linked to the most endangered old members, both in terms of health and social factors, in the society characterized by the wide-ranging paternalism.

This anthropological analysis focuses on the Croatian feature film Night Boats (2012), directed by Igor Mirković. The subject of the movie is a partnership that develops between two residents of a nursing home in Zagreb, highlighting, among other things, numerous problems and difficulties that the elderly face while trying to pursue a new romantic relationship at the very end of their lives, in specific nursing home conditions. The couple’s escape from the nursing home serves as an act of resistance, leaving room for the analysis of visual depictions of the various deprivations encountered by the elderly. Depictions of physical, emotional and economic dependency which result in an inability to make independent decisions, are in accordance with the results attained during several years of field research conducted in nursing homes in the Republic of Serbia. This research, which explores new partnerships as strategies of action among nursing home residents, will be compared with the film’s visual interpretations. Interpreting the visual depiction of deprivation and infirmity, which society associates the elderly with, will also include a semiotic interpretation of the symbolic expression that is used in the movie.

The aim of the paper was to introduce the specialized press oriented towards jazz music and its practitioners that was published from 1953 to 1965 on the territory of the Republic of Serbia. The marked period was chosen for consideration since it represents the most fruitful stage in the development of the press of a specific thematic profile, but also because of the significant changes in the entire Yugoslav society. These changes, as it was possible to show, influenced the complex processes that shaped the press of the time, as well as the attitude towards this musical genre and its practitioners. The processes in question include, first of all: certain internal political movements that consistently modeled the cultural policy of the time, within which jazz attempted to obtain a favorable position; integration of the former socialist state into polarized international currents that implied the use of jazz as a means of affirming the foreign policy orientation of Yugoslav society; and the creation of the operational power of artists for self-organization and the acquisition of certain labor and social rights within the Association of Jazz Musicians. The association was founded in 1953 in Belgrade with the aim of advocating for the rights of contemporary musicians, while at the same time initiating the publication of the first newspaper Jazz: Journal of Popular and Jazz Music (Jazz. List za pitanja zabavne i džez muzike). Under this name, the journal was published from 1953 to 1954, and during the publication period from 1957 to 1958 it changed its name to Bulletin of the Association of Jazz Musicians (Bilten Udruženja Jazz muzičara). After that, in Novi Sad, in 1962, Rhythm – Yugoslav Review of Jazz and Popular Music (Ritam – Jugoslovenska revija za džez i zabavnu muziku) began to be publish by NIP Dnevnik, and later changed its name to Rhythm – Yugoslav Review of Popular Music (Ritam – Jugoslovenska revija za zabavnu muziku), under which it continued to be published until it ceased publication in 1965.

This paper analyses Croatian film Night boats (2012), directed by Igor Mirković, from the anthropology of film and anthropology of age point of view. The film story is analyzed as the so-called diegetic universe, i.e. as an ethnography of the film, and is connected to the real experiences of the elderly. The plot of the film follows the meeting and emotional bonding of Helena and Jakov in one of Zagreb's nursing homes. Shortly after their brief acquaintance, these "seventy-year-old teenagers" begin a romance, run away from home and embark on a road adventure. In terms of genre, this film can be viewed as a road movie since, in addition to the fact that the main characters spend more than half of the plot on the road, the film thematically and visually follows the conventions of the aforementioned genre. Their road adventure is initiated on a metaphorical level, as an escape from illness and death, as well as an escape from loneliness and the circumstances that life in old age brings. The main characters flee from the lack of choice they are faced with which is why their journey can be interpreted as a search for lost, almost stripped identities. The journey of Helena and Jacob, two elderly individuals faced with the problems of loneliness and physical decline, represents a transformative experience for the main characters and signifies a form of quiet rebellion, a refusal to accept cultural conventions according to which active life ends with a socially constructed notion of old age. In this sense, this film story served to critically address various issues and problems concerning society’s stereotypical attitudes towards the elderly.

The development of the Internet and digital technologies has influenced the ever- greater migrations of printed content to the digital sphere (blogs, online media, Internet portals, social networks), which has also brought with itself changes in readers’ habits and in the concept and format of texts as wells. Music press is no exception in that respect. In the context of South European states, these processes coincide with the period of political, social, cultural and economic transition, giving rise to the development of numerous regional and local specific forms of popular culture. The existence of the SFRY as a shared state enabled the creation of an authentic cultural space, which continued to develop even after its disintegration. This paper endeavors to shed light on one segment of that local authenticity through an analysis of music press. The aim the authors of this paper aspire to achieve is the presentation of the development path of the printed media in the first place inthe Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, then in Serbia, as well as the reconstructions of the modality of the transformation of this media in the transition period from an anthropological perspective. The wish is to identify the perception and significance of music as a local culturalphenomenon through the qualitative analysis of the archival material and the available Internet sources as well, then to trace the cultural changes that have been going on over time as a result of global and local social and cultural turmoil. We do not refer to press only as the medium which has an informative role, but rather as the medium that reflects the local community’s attitudes, simultaneously constructing narratives on popular culture that are incorporated in our everyday life.

The things surviving into the present from the previous epochs have under- gone the processes of selection and fragmentation.Therefore, the elements from the past that penetrate into another time are fragmented and represent a (material) memory of the previous practices, events, lifestyles, or an unknown that easily raises mystical ideas about the other worlds. Gavin Lucas describes this phenomenon of past penetrating into the present as percolation (lat. percolatio). The term is derived from chemistry, where it denotes filtration or drainage, i. e. the passage of fluid through a filter and separation of substances The archaeological perspective is capable to deal with the coexistence of sets of material culture from various times in thepresent. On the other hand, the polychrony of archaeological assemblages has often been purified and separated through scientific practices – as if the present is not always filled with the past. The interpretation of the mutual relations among the past times andtheir usage/ meaning in the new contexts is not susceptible to simple solutions. It is hard to explain why a certain event or an objectdisappears from the memory and usage, while others endure into the present or occur again. The paper analyses the Early Medieval funerary contexts from the necropolis Ravna–Slog in which the artefacts originating from the Roman or prehistoric periods are registered along with the Medieval ones. The similar phenomenon is registered in the case ofthe Avar-Period graves. The mixed contexts from Ravna are interpreted as the consequence of the need to construct the link to the past, with the aim to legitimize the presence in the new territory.

Although the history of Serbian archaeology has recently been a vivid field of study from various standpoints, the focus of this research has mainly been upon the early phases of the discipline, while the last thirty years have rarely been discussed. Additionally, the more extreme abuses of archaeological practice for political purposes, although minority positions, but still evident in the recent past, are mainly avoided. Therefore, this paper presents a critical discursive analysis of the recent history of Serbian archaeology in the context of the wars and crises of the 1990s and the post-conflict circumstances. The issue is raised of the transition achieved by Serbian archaeology from the dominance of ethnic determinism, apparent in the majority of archaeological interpretations, to the state of epistemic optimism, as a possible characterisation of the current state. The idea of “the Serbian gromile”, penned by Đorđe Janković, is taken as the case study, focusing on the explanatory mechanisms supporting it. The emergence of this idea is contextualized in the situation of social crisis, war, and trauma, and interpreted on the other hand as a continuation of the tradition of the Slavic archaeology, adhering in Yugoslavia to the culture-historical approach. The interpretation of “the Serbian gromile” offered here is thus specific in arguing that it is not an exception, but the tip of an iceberg – a part of the general tendency of Serbian archaeology in the traditional key. The analysis has revealed that the explanatory mechanism, serving as a scaffold to the interpretation offered by Janković in his search for the early Medieval “Serbian gromile”, was in fact the abuse of interdisciplinarity. Namely, the relationships with ethnology and physical anthropology were problematic in Serbian archaeology under the culture-historical framework, since they were not theoretically explicated and therefore prone to political appropriation. The dark shadow of interdisciplinary unity can only be avoided through the explication of approaches of individual fields of research and their integration, from the research design to the final interpretation. In its new iteration, incorporating social anthropology and bioarchaeology, interdisciplinarity in Serbian archaeology fostered new perspectives in the spirit of epistemic optimism.

Science or Humanities – Whither Archaeology?, session of the 28th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists, 31st August – 3rd September 2022, Budapest, Hungary Session organizers: Artur Ribeiro (University of Kiel), Liv Nilsson Stutz (Linnaeus University), Tobias Kienlin (University of Cologne)

This anthropological analysis of the Serbian TV series Muddy Tires (Kaljave Gume), which aired in the spring of 2021 on the Radio Television of Serbia, aims to point out the principal meanings which can be subsumed under the three dominant problems faced by the protagonist Vesna when she finds herself in situations that demand a reexamination of previously accepted norms regarding older members of contemporary Serbian society. The analytical procedure, also applied to film, involved the construction and study of an ethnography which consists of production, content and reception, with primary emphasis on the first two elements. In this way, it was possible to distinguish several of the more important themes that underpin the basic plot structure, which, very briefly, follows the everyday life of a sixty-year-old former pianist who, following the death of her husband with whom she had an unhappy marriage, leaves for California to visit her son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren. Her relocation from the environment in which she has spent her entire life has thus created the conditions for her to embark on a new relationship with an elderly American whom she met online, but also for the process of conflict with and resistance to norms which have typically dictated to her, as a widow, certain emotions, and actions in accordance with them, while challenging others. This process in which her age is foregrounded in contrast to actions which are labelled "out of time" and therefore inappropriate, even unacceptable for those closest to her, also involves actions by opponents dressed up in the specific form of ageism such as the so-called well-meaning ageism, when an older person is forced to accept unwanted expressions of "concern" and "assistance". Finally, a subsidiary but haunting motif is the motif of suicide of older members of society (in the series committed by Vesna’s brother-in-law Jovan), which functions as a reflection of easier acceptance and understanding by one’s community, unlike the decision to continue life in a new, late-life relationship following the death of a spouse. Finally, it should be observed that the attitudes, actions and censure of the adult members of one’s family are dominant.

The decades-long process of studying popular culture as part of Serbian anthropology has been expanded and deepened with the anthropology of television series as a soundly established subdisciplinary field. Aiming to shed light on various aspects of problems by means of anthropological insights – from the meaning of specific television series to the audience needs they satisfy – the Journal's first issue in 2022 comprises four original scholarly articles, namely: Prof. Bojan Žikić's The Vampire as a Model of Cultural Otherness in the Television Series What We Do in the Shadows; Asst. Prof. Bogdan Dražeta's Ethnic and Regional Stereotypes in the TV Series Konak kod Hilmije; research associate Milan Tomašević’s The Sixth Corridor: The Contextualization of the TV Series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey; and Culture Wars in Gothic Mode: The Example of HBO’s Miniseries Sharp Object (2018) by Vladana Ilić, a doctoral student at the Department of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade.

Miloje M. Vasić (1869–1956) is considered to be the founding father of Serbian archaeology. This paper directly challenges, as based on detailed archival research, the prevailing view that his excavation of the Vinča archaeological site is a model standard for Serbian archaeology. Instead, Vasić’s handling of the excavation was selective, non-systematic and destructive when viewed today from the perspective of modern practices. Vasić originally gained authority based on the discovery of Vinča, a prehistoric archaeological site that contains layers from the Neolithic to the middle ages. In his zeal to uncover “prehistory”, he deliberately ignored the other archaeological layers present. The most significant example of neglected archaeological remains is his excavations of Vinča’s medieval cemetery where he did not document observations systematically. This prioritization of the importance of one archaeological period over another was reflected in the further development of archaeology in Serbia, so that medieval archaeology was treated as marginal and second-rate compared to others. The aim of this paper, therefore, is to contextualize Vasić’s approach through the methods used in the history of archaeology. The key research question thereof is how Miloje M. Vasić failed to document the burials at the Vinča site, which is the consequent reason why there is little to no documented evidence of them. The theoretical and methodological basis of the analysis is based on the approach of Gavin Lucas who views the creation of the primary field documentation as testimony. Lucas notes that the debate concerning knowledge production had drifted from merely an epistemological issue to a phenomenon centered around archaeological practice. Here the key questions have come to concern the social and material setting of knowledge production and not the objective coherence of the argument. Burials that were noted in Vasić’s documentation are categorized into four groups: 1) unwanted or medieval burials; 2) incidental burials originating from prehistory 3) an “ossuary” from Vinča containing nine skeletons and 4) imagined multiple cremations based on one found cremation. Therefore, even while documenting several “lateral” prehistoric graves, he entirely omitted any thorough documentation of the medieval cemetery, considering them of less import. If there is any lesson that may be learned from this journey through the history of archaeological practice, it is that archaeological documentation as a form of testimony should be done ethically, adequately and responsibly. It should not be done according to the practices of the “bad science” of its founding-fathers.

The research into the Medieval necropolises in the territory of present-day Serbia has established a relatively standardized mode of interment of the bodies of men, women, and children. The deceased were laid supine oriented west to east, with their head to the west. This paper addresses the deviations from this practice recorded in the necropolises dated into the period from the 10th to the 15th centuries. The evidence is critically discussed on the individuals oriented contrary to the established standard, the ones buried in the foetal position, the deceased thrown into the burial pit or laid prone, facing downward. The aim of the paper is to raise the question who were these people, deprived of the prescriptive Christian funeral and the adequate treatment of their bodies in death. The research is based on the precept that there is a correlation between the persons laid in extraordinary positions in their graves, and the outcasts, stigmatized and marginalized individuals. The paper is based upon the theoretical basis that postulates the burial and the treatment of a dead body as the community’s encounter with a social loss and the additional unwanted outcome of death – the cadaver. Additionally, the modes of marginalization and the generation of the marginalized in a society through the deprivation of a decent burial are discussed from various perspectives, starting with the ideas of Robert E. Park, Erving Goffman and Elisa Perego. Regardless of the fact that the phenomenon of the atypically buried individuals has not been duly investigated in the Serbian Medieval archaeology, the analysis of the evidence shows that contexts corresponding to this type are registered at no less than 19 sites. In order to offer a more precise answer to the question which of these individuals have indeed been marginalized and why, it is essential to conduct physical-anthropological analyses, present in only two instances treated here. Considering the quality of the data at the disposal, the paper reaches the conclusion that the individuals laid contrary to the norm (with the exception of children), thrown into the burial pit, or laid prone facing downward, are indeed the marginalized ones. Particularly are indicative the situations where more than one parameter of stigmatization is present in one funerary context. The suggestion is put forward that the flexed individuals laid in foetal position are the ones who could not have been laid prone due to some illness, such as muscular atrophy of paralysis. The extraordinary treatment of some new-borns and children, buried under the stećci, raises the issue of the social position of children in this cultural context. In spite of the limitations of reinterpretation of old evidence, the potential is demonstrated of the research integrating various lines of evidence: archaeological, physical-anthropological, ethnographic, historiographic, and legal-historic.

Based on the results of anthropological fieldwork conducted in 2015 and 2016, the paper aims to review the employees’ experience regarding the process of the acceleration of time in the office of one multinational company in Belgrade. The scientific focus is placed on working hours and certain temporal boundaries that characterize it. The most significant outcome is that the experience of a given phenomenon is the result of the fact that time spent during the work increasingly pushes the private time of interlocutors to the point of complete usurpation. The process of the acceleration of time was analyzed at three levels based on the statements of fifty-six respondents. The methods used in this study were structured interviews, observation of daily activities and practices in the company’s office, participant observation, survey on the demographic and socio-economic profiles of the interlocutors, and a field diary. The first level involved an analysis of business hours esteem; the second one was oriented towards studying the process and period of employees’ adjustment to foreign colleagues; while the third level of analysis aimed to instruct employees’ relationship to working hours before and after the experience of worink with foreign colleagues. This research design turned out to be the most appropriate if we keep in mind that the results of this study lean on the results of anthropological research from 2005, which aimed to review the experiences, strategies and expectations of 30 employed Belgraders of different work positions, work orientations and the length of careers in terms of working hours. Amonog these 30 respondents the blurring of the differences between business and private sphere of life has been detected due to the experience of working in a changed socio-economic and political context since 2000 and the beginning of the reform process within EU integration process, accompanied by the specific social acceleration. The continuation of these processes, with certain features that come as a result of another change in the country’s political climate in 2012, therefore, are the key pathways through which the phenomenon of the acceleration of time in the modern Serbian society was observed on the example of a specific work/business community. Consequently, the acceleration of the Serbian society during the second decade of the 21st century, on the example of employees in the office of one multinational company in Belgrade, showed that the experience of working hours and certain temporal boundaries that characterize it among employees is such that private time is almost completely usurped by work time. This can be read through working hours, which practically cease to have clearly defined temporal boundaries in life of most respondents. The performance of work tasks is placed in the service of merging the spheres of business and private life into one, within the wokring hours.

Multiple processes in modern Serbia occurred at the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty first century. Almost all of them regard political, economic, and social changes. Influences caused by these changes can be seen in the social template across the spectrum of plans, encompassing various spheres of life of individuals from business to private, all the way to the point where this division, for many, is gradually disappearing. In that sense, this paper will follow the most anthropologically interesting example of research, the one that follows the influences of the undertaken reform processes and observed changes. This is the example that regards the experience and evaluation of time among employed inhabitants of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. The aim of this paper was to refer to the results of anthropological fieldwork conducted in 2005, which focused on the experiences, strategies and expectations of employed Belgraders in terms of their working hours and certain temporal boundaries that characterize it. Due to the increasingly intensive business contacts with foreign partners and colleagues since 2000, the working hours of employees were analyzed in a narrower context, as they were on the long list of adjustments, mostly to Western influences. These contacts were not only more frequent after the period of the 1990s, which, among other things, is characterized by a sudden break in cooperation with foreigners, but were often dictated by the EU integration process, the increase of the private sector in which operated companies were oriented towards profit, and the acceleration of time. The last aspect was examined in 2005 through a sample comprising 30 interlocutors of various business backgrounds. The ethnographic material was categorized and analyzed with regard to the differentiation of respondents by age. Fifteen respondents were chosen to represent the older generation (born in the 1940s and 1950s) and as many the younger generation (born in the 1960s and 1980s). The blurring of the boundaries between the employees’ business and private life in Belgrade became more marked at the turn of the century, and it could be clearly stated through the example of working time. Differences between the period of socialism and the period of reforms since the 1990s relate also to a sense of insecurity and fear of losing one's job or having inadequate work, and the simultaneous development of the private sector, which is characterized by stricter rules for employees. More intensive was the influence of business on the private domain of life, but also the intrusion of the private into business life. This has become a necessity and a pledge of individual functioning on both levels, which show combined characteristics of acceleration through the increase of obligations.

Miloje M. Vasić (1869–1956) is considered to be the founding father of Serbian archaeology. This paper directly challenges, as based on detailed archival research, the prevailing view that his excavation of the Vinča archaeological site is a model standard for Serbian archaeology. Instead, Vasić’s handling of the excavation was selective, non-systematic and destructive when viewed today from the perspective of modern practices. Vasić originally gained authority based on the discovery of Vinča, a prehistoric archaeological site that contains layers from the Neolithic to the middle ages. In his zeal to uncover “prehistory”, he deliberately ignored the other archaeological layers present. The most significant example of neglected archaeological remains is his excavations of Vinča’s medieval cemetery where he did not document observations systematically. This prioritization of the importance of one archaeological period over another was reflected in the further development of archaeology in Serbia, so that medieval archaeology was treated as marginal and second-rate compared to others. The aim of this paper, therefore, is to contextualize Vasić’s approach through the methods used in the history of archaeology. The key research question thereof is how Miloje M. Vasić failed to document the burials at the Vinča site, which is the consequent reason why there is little to no documented evidence of them. The theoretical and methodological basis of the analysis is based on the approach of Gavin Lucas who views the creation of the primary field documentation as testimony. Lucas notes that the debate concerning knowledge production had drifted from merely an epistemological issue to a phenomenon centered around archaeological practice. Here the key questions have come to concern the social and material setting of knowledge production and not the objective coherence of the argument. Burials that were noted in Vasić’s documentation are categorized into four groups: 1) unwanted or medieval burials; 2) incidental burials originating from prehistory; 3) an “ossuary” from Vinča containing nine skeletons and 4) imagined multiple cremations based on one found cremation. Therefore, even while documenting several “lateral” prehistoric graves, he entirely omitted any thorough documentation of the medieval cemetery, considering them of less import. If there is any lesson that may be learned from this journey through the history of archaeological practice, it is that archaeological documentation as a form of testimony should be done ethically, adequately and responsibly. It should not be done according to the practices of the “bad science” of its founding-fathers.

The paper investigates the relationship between archaeological paradigm, fieldwork practice and archaeological records generated in Serbia after the World War II. The issue is the need to revalorize “old” archaeological records in the context of the current theoretical changes and of adaptation of the existing evidence to new research perspectives. These general issues are discussed on the example of culture-historical or traditional approach in Medieval archaeology in the Serbian context. From the point of view of postprocessual archaeology, the paradigmatic position entirely determines the evidence generated during excavations. Consequently, it may be expected that the excavations conducted under the culture-historical school of thought may only answer the questions posed from the culture-historical viewpoint. Therefore, the limitations are great of reinterpretation of the evidence generated in the culture-historical framework. Additionally, the problems of reinterpretation are raised by inaccessibility or non-existence of complete field documentation or unsatisfactory archiving. In other words, the data at our disposal are far removed from the complexity of archaeological record necessary for new insights and a better understanding of the past. The problem is further influenced by the specific character of archaeological knowledge and the issue of non-replicability that differs archaeology from other experimentally grounded research areas. Consequently, a string of problems raises in the process of reinterpretation of the “old” evidence, but it can still be treated as useful in interpretation, provided that it is adequately contextualized. The key points of the changed approach to archaeological research today may be defined as the overcoming of the notion of paradigm and the dualistic mode of thinking, with an emphasized importance of post-humanist philosophy and new materialism. One of the aspects of the post-humanist approach is the consideration of animals in archaeological record as companions to people of the past. This case-study considers specific issues of human-animal relations and “animal turn” on the grounds of the archaeological records interpreted as Mediaeval in the framework of the culture-historical paradigm. The new positioning of the “old” evidence stems from the theoretical tendencies linked to the “ontological turn” in social anthropology and archaeology, and the social epistemology of L. Fleck.

Before the World War I, in his works on the historical anthropology of the Balkan peoples, Niko Županić laid down the theoretical and methodological foundations of the research into the population of the region from the prehistoric to the modern times, thus establishing a kind of long-lasting continuity. It is possible to assume that his doctorial studies of philosophy in Vienna, as well as specialization in anthropology in Munich and Zurich, have profoundly influenced the way in which Niko Županić conceptualized the study of the Balkan peoples. However, this was not a simple idea transfer, but a process of modification, in accordance to the understanding of his own identity and the political circumstances of Županić’s work. His research into peoples is particularly important in the light of perseverance of culture-historical paradigm in the Serbian/Yugoslavian archaeologies.

The notion of savage man came into being through one of the most vital issues raised by the people in the past – that of humanity. Even in the most ancient written sources, savage man is introduced as a defining notion of the demarcation between the world of humans and the world of animals. On the other hand, this notion can be taken as a relational phenomenon of imagination, whose chronological changes are indicative of the reverse side of “normality” under various social circumstances. The subject of this paper is the idea of savage man as the Other in the history of archaeological ideas. The idea entered archaeology along with the concept of savagery, by which anthropology ensured the position of allochronic discourse among scientific disciplines – the science about other people in other times. Since the “ethnographic present” has remained an important frame of reference for archaeological investigation, the idea of savage man has been directing archaeological interpretations of the culturally and chronologically most distant European pasts. The aim of the paper is to reconsider the mechanisms by which the humanities, applying the myth of savage man, enforce the modern European identity as opposed to the Others in space and time. The ideas of savage man will be explored in the context of Late Mediaeval and early modern societies, as the means for interpretation of identities in the past. After the postcolonial critique, this approach offers the model for understanding the ways in which communities in the past thought their own identities as opposed to imagined (non)humanity, but also how these imagined constructs influenced certain social practices recognizable in the archaeological record.

Brković, Čarna. 2017. Managing Ambiguity, How Clientelism, Citizenship and Power Shape Personhood in Bosnia and Herzegovina. EASA series vol. 31. New York: Berghahn, 196 pages

The aim of this paper is to present the results of research conducted as part of the “Ambivalent nostalgia in the cultural heritage of gastarbeiters” project of the Ethnological-anthropological society of Serbia. The research was conducted in Kučevo and Wienna in 2014. The research focused on older guest workers or gastarbeiters who are mostly in the status of disabled pensioners, and seniors whose family members work abroad. An important criterion for determining the gasterbeiter population was entering into the sphere of work in an active capacity, specified by the assumed “temporality” in the country of work; the determination of “seniority” is based on the criteria of exiting the active sphere of work. In this way a new kind of old person, a new kind of pensioner was formed – the foreign currency pensioner whose operating strategies are partly in the focus of this paper. Aside from these strategies, the paper analyzes the strategies employed by the family members of gastarbeiters facing the old age of their relatives who reside in their country of origin either permanently or on a semi-permanent basis; as well as the strategies which the Gerontological Society of Serbia tried to develop in cooperation with the former Ministry of Diaspora RS with the aim of attracting aging gastarbeiters to domestic nursing homes, as well as stimulating the diaspora to invest in such institutions in Serbia. In short, the life experiences and attitudes of 14 pensioners interviewed in Kučevo and Vienna on issues of old age, possible – or ongoing life in a nursing home, the differences and/or similarities between them and other old folks they encountered abroad or at home, as well as experiences with working with the aging gastarbeiter population shared by six employees in a private as well as a public nursing home in Kučevo, will be the object of analysis in this paper.

From the point of view of the fact-oriented history of archaeology, there is no reason to consider the works of Jovan Cvijić and Vladimir Dvorniković. However, if we consider the history of ideas that have fundamentally determined the course of Serbian archaeology, it is relevant to examine the contributions of other disciplines and their key representatives. In the case of Serbian archaeology, the estimation of interdisciplinary transfers of ideas must be approached critically and with great caution, due to the deeply rooted tradition of not explicating the theoretical and methodological base of research. In other words, well into the 20th century, archaeologists have very rarely referred to authors from other fields of research, especially when dealing with general social phenomena. Serbian archaeology has tended to be a-theoretical, and the ideas of social development, social dynamics, or the rules of social behaviour have been considered as “implicit knowledge”, that need not be explained. However, these knowledges are counted upon, and are still considered as indubitable; there lies the power of “common points”, whose origins and genesis are very hard to discern. In this case study, the aim is to: 1) reconsider the link between the culture-historical archaeology in Serbia and cultural belts of Jovan Cvijić; and then to 2) attempt to understand the genealogy of the idea of continuity in Serbian archaeology. In other words, we shall challenge the apparently very logical supposition that our culture-historical archaeology has used the foundations laid by Jovan Cvijić, both in the case of cultural belts and of continuity. It will be demonstrated that archaeologists have skipped the lesson of Cvijić’s anthropo-geographical school of cultural circles, as well as his rejection of deep continuity in the Balkans. This means that the source of the archaeological idea of the elements of (material) culture that may be preserved from prehistory to the present, must be sought for in another direction, outside the work of Cvijić. One possible solution is to acknowledge the worlds of ideas of Milan Budimir and Veselin Čajkanović, along with very explicit ideas of continuity of less known Niko Županić and more prominent Vladimir Dvorniković, who modified and widely disseminated the ideas of Županić.

The first year (2011) Implementation of Projects of Department of Ethnology and Anthropology Faculty of Philosophy University of Belgrade, financed by the Ministry of Culture, Information and Information Society RS

Review of a book by Siniša Malešević. Sociologija etniciteta. [ Sociology of Ethnicity]. 2009. Beograd: Fabrika knjiga, Edicija REČ, pp. 351

Antropološka analiza filma Bez stepenika (2015) podrazumeva osvetljavanje najvažnijih podataka vezanih za produkciju filma, zatim opis dijegeze uz pripadajuću analizu i fragmentarnu recepciju filma, kao i njegove pojedine efekte. Specifičnost datog filma, pored činjenice da pripada kategoriji televizijskog filma koji ima bogatu tradiciju snimanja u domaćim okvirim, ali i manju atraktivnost od komercijalnog, barem kada je naučna pažnja u pitanju, izvedena je i iz okolnosti orijentacije ka liku stare osobe kao glavnom junaku. Iz načina na koji je portretisana bolest penzionisanog profesora neuropsihijatrije – Alchajmerova demencija – bilo je moguće pokazati i s kojim se sve problemima susreću oni koji oboljevaju, ali i oni koji su time pogođeni. Naposletku, suženi obim mogućnosti u slepoj ulici, glavnog junaka smešta u dom za stara lica, dok gledaoca neminovno suočava s pojedinim efektima filma – sa strahom od starosti ali i s dilemama i normama koje regulišu bavljenje označenim problemom u savremenom srpskom društvu.

U pseudoarheološkim tekstovima, bilo da oni dolaze iz sasvim marginalnih izvora, ili iz sive zone bliske pseudonauci unutar same discipline, primećuje se navada pozivanja na različite analize i metode iz domena prirodnih nauka, koje bi trebalo da osnaže autorove stavove. Suština ove pseudonaučne strategije je izmeštanje težišta sa polja arheološke argumentacije i proverljivih arheoloških podataka, na klizaviji teren lažne kompleksnosti i tobožnje multidisciplinarnosti. Arheološka epistemologija podrazumeva da svaka interpretacija prošlosti zahteva jasan i ekspliciran teorijski okvir i proverljive podatke, kao i njihov dinamičan, recipročan odnos osmišljavanja i provere. Pseudonaučne tvrdnje po pravilu nemaju teorijski i metodološki okvir, a sami podaci kreću se od najobičnijih falsifikata, pa do proizvoljnih interpretacija autentičnih artefakata. Kako bi se prikrila slaba, ili nikakva, arheološka zasnovanost takvih interpretacija pribegava se izmeštanju argumentacije u oblast, za koju se podrazumeva da j

Ciklus predavanja u okviru seminara Antropološka agora u 2017. godini na Odeljenju za etnologiju i antropologiju Filozofskog fakulteta Univerziteta u Beogradu, u organizaciji Instituta za Etnologiju i antropologiju Filozofskog fakulteta

In pseudo-archaeological writings, both the ones originating from marginal sources, but as well from the grey zone inside the discipline itself, a tendency can be identified to invoke various analyses and methods from the realm of natural sciences, aimed at justifying authors’ ideas. The aim of this strategy is dislocation of argumentation from the field of archaeology and verifiable archaeological data into the more slippery field of false complexity and presumed interdisciplinarity. Archaeological epistemology presupposes that every interpretation of the past requires a clear and explicit theoretical framework and verifiable data, as well as their dynamic relationship of reciprocity through research design. On the other hand, as a rule pseudo-scientific claims do not comply to any theoretical or methodological framework, and the very data base used spans from simple forgeries to random interpretations of authentic artefacts. In order to compensate for weak or even non-existent archaeological grounds of these interpretations, argumentation is transferred into the area supposed to be less accessible to archaeological public, so that false and unsubstantiated claims can be made.

Miloje Vasić je smatrao da su kulturne promene rezultat dodira kulturno superiornih centara i inferiorne periferije, te da se one arheološki najbolje manifestuju u kultnim praksama. Smatrao je da ovaj proces ima dve oprečne prirode: s jedne strane, posmatrao je kultne fenomene kao dinamične impulse koji se na kulturnoj periferiji usvajaju pod uticajima centara „viših” civilizacija, dok ih je, s druge strane, doživljavao kao konzervativne, trome i gotovo nepromenljive strukture koje izbijaju iz vanvremenskih i dubokih slojeva tla. U konkretnom slučaju, kojim se Vasić bavio tokom čitave karijere, ovi naizgled suprotstavljeni, ali suštinski sinergični vektori bili su dubinski kultni supstrati praistorijskog Podunavlja i kultne, odnosno religijske ideje i prakse bronzanodobne Egeje i klasične Grčke. Takva kultna sinergija prožimanja centra i periferije bila je, po Vasiću, toliko snažna da je omogućila kontinuitet mnogih kultnih i kulturnih fenomena (sirvivala) na Balkanu sve do modernog doba. Za interpretaciju ovih fenomena razvio je složen mehanizam, kojim je objašnjavao kako se originalne ideje iz centra transformišu do neprepoznatljivosti na periferiji. Taj mehanizam omogućio mu je, hronološki i prostorno, slobodno i neograničeno analoško zaključivanje, koje je neminovno dovodilo do pogrešnih interpretacija, što je imalo dugoročne epistemološke posledice u srpskoj arheolgiji.

The focus of our research was on the old age life strategies of retired gastarbeiters. For labor migrants who went to work "temporarily" abroad, becoming pensioners opens up a slew of problematic issues about their social status in host countries. This is a topic which has been neglected in Serbian academia, and has recently attracted the attention of the global scientific community through the attempt to make an interdisciplinary connection between studies of migration and studies of age. So far, the literature on migrant-pensioners has mostly dealt with the topic of "returning" to the home country, however it became evident that a large number of migrants stays in host countries well into old age, hence the recent trend in Europe to consider the issue of their status, pensions and social welfare as well as other forms of support for this, still largely nationally, socially and economically marginalized population. We wanted to examine the situation with Serbian gastarbeiters - are they coming back to their homeland after retiring or not, how they value their old age and what life strategies do they adhere to in retirement.

Svojim radovima o istorijskoj antropologiji balkanskih naroda pred Prvi svetski rat, Niko Županić je fundirao teorijsko-metodološke osnove proučavanja balkanskih naroda počevši od praistorijskih pa do njemu savremenih populacija, uspostavljajući među njima jednu vrstu kontinuiteta. Osnovano je pretpostaviti da su doktorske studije iz oblasti filozofskih nauka u Beču i specijalizacije iz antropologije u Minhenu i Cirihu snažno uticale na njegovo shvatanje načina na koje treba proučavati narode na Balkanu. Svakako, nije reč o jednostavnom prenošenju ideja, već o njihovoj modifikaciji u skladu sa Županićevim razumevanjem sopstvenog identiteta i političkih okolnosti u kojima je delovao. Uzimajući u obzir značaj kulturno-istorijske paradigme u srpskim/jugoslovenskim arheologijama, odnosno ogledanje arheološke kulture i etniciteta, proučavanje naroda u istraživanjima Nika Županića se preispituje kao jedan od mogućih okvira za nastanak opštih mesta etnogenetskog metoda.

Pojam divljeg čoveka pojavio se kroz jedno od najvitalnijih pitanja o kojem su ljudi u prošlosti razmišljali, kroz pitanje ljudskosti. Divlji čovek se, još od prve pisane književnosti, uvodi kao pojam koji definiše kuda bi se mogla povući linija između sveta životinja i sveta ljudi. Sa druge strane, ovaj pojam se može shvatiti kao relacioni fenomen imaginacije čije su hronološke promene pokazatelji naličja „normalnosti“ u različitim društvenim okolnostima. Predmet istraživanja je ideja divljeg čoveka kao Drugog unutar istorije arheoloških ideja. Ona je u arheologiju dospela zahvaljujući konceptu divljaštava u jednolinijskom evolucionizmu. Pošto je „etnografska sadašnjost“ do danas ostala važan uporedni okvir za arheološka istraživanja, ideja o divljem čoveku je usmeravala arheološke interpretacije kulturno i hronološki najudaljenijih evropskih prošlosti. Cilj rada je preispitivanje mehanizama kojima humanističke discipline, upotrebom mita o divljem čoveku, ojačavaju moderni identitet Evropljana nasuprot drugima u prostoru i vremenu. Takođe, ideje o divljem čoveku biće sagledane u kontekstu društava iz prošlosti, da bi kao takve poslužile kao sredstvo za interpretiranje identiteta na osnovu arheološkog zapisa

Izveštaj sa Međunarodnog naučnog simpozijuma: Prostori pamćenja: arhitektura, baština, umetnost.

Review of the book: Marija Ristivojević, Muzika sveta kao novi oblik tradicije. Beograd: Srpski genealoški centar, 2013.

Review of the book: Isaija Berlin, 2012. Koreni romantizma, Melonova predavanja u Nacionalnoj umetničkoj galeriji, 1965. Vašington, DS (urednik britanskog izdanja: Henri Hardi; preveo sa engleskog: Branimir Gligorić; stihove prevela: Nataša Tučev). Službeni glasnik: Beograd, 183 str.

Successful Realization of the Slovenian-Serbian Bilateral Project: Intercultural Relations in the Former Yugoslav Republics.

U ovom radu cilj nam je 1) preispitivanje veze između kulturno-istorijske arheologije u Srbiji i kulturnih pojasa Jovana Cvijića, kao i 2) pokušaj razumevanja genealogije ideje kontinuiteta u srpskoj arheologiji. Odnosno, dovešćemo u pitanje, na prvi pogled, vrlo logičnu pretpostavku da je kulturno-istorijska arheologija kod nas iskoristila temelje koje je Cvijić postavio, bilo da je reč o kulturnim pojasima ili o kontinuitetu. Ispostaviće se da su arheolozi propustili Cvijićevu lekciju antropogeografske škole kulturnih krugova, kao i njegovo negiranje dubokog kontinuiteta na Balkanu. To znači da se izvorište arheološke ideje o elementima (materijalne) kulture koji se mogu očuvati od praistorije do danas, mora tražiti van Cvijićevog opusa. Kao moguće rešenje, treba uvažiti svetove ideja Milana Budimira i Veselina Čajkanovića uz vrlo jasne eksplikacije kontinuiteta manje poznatog Nika Županića i poznatijeg Vladimira Dvornikovi- ća, koji je Županićeve ideje modifikovao i široko rasejao.

Antropološka agora: ciklus predavanja školske 2010/11. godine na Odeljenju za etnologiju i antropologiju, Filozofskog fakulteta Univerziteta u Beogradu

This paper is the result of a three-month monitoring of Serbian television commercials which aimed to study the way elderly people are represented in the media. Elderly people appear in only six commercials, more often as a functional part of a series than as protagonists. Yet in spite of the small number of commercials in which they appear, it is easy to identify the stereotypes which are translated from a social paradigm into the sphere of the media. The stereotypes on which commercials are based belong for the most part to the corpus of negative stereotypes of elderly people as hopelessly behind the times, feeble, lonely, irritating, cantankerous, etc. Some positive stereotypes are also evident, but they are mostly limited to a perception of elderly people as kindly givers of useful advice. It is interesting to note that the "cantankerous people next door" are as a rule anonymous elderly people, as are those "lost in time and space", who are mostly elderly women. In contrast, those who let their careers and images be associated with a certain product, in order to pass on their great experience and knowledge, are as a rule famous persons. Just as it is possible to make a distinction between commercials depending on whether or not the products advertised are targeted at the elderly – which they rarely are – and whether elderly people appear in leading or supporting roles, in order to make viewers laugh or annoy them, so it is possible to distinguish between the "real-life principle", which involves the translation of the society’s dominant attitudes into commercials, and "commercial reality", which either makes old age invisible or "masks" it so that it is pleasant to the eye. The reason that old people are absent from television commercials or are mostly represented in a negative light is to be found in the low purchasing power of this age group, but also in the fact that advertising in Serbia developed practically overnight, and therefore has not always been able to follow foreign advertising trends, which treat the elderly as a worthy target audience for commercials.

Review of the book: Marko A. Janković, Vladimir D. Mihajlović and Staša Babić (eds.) The Edges of the Roman World. 2014. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars. 265 pp.

The anthropological study of commercials is based on the meaning of the entire content of the commercial, in order to contextualize the time and space in which the commercial is made and used. On the basis of this analytical step it can be determined which values the commercial contains and what its relationship to the value system in its surroundings is. The analytical steps of the semiology of commercials, as the most important methodological approach in the anthropological analysis of commercials, is generated from the general semiological approach but can also be “borrowed” from the semiology of visual images, especially the semiology of film.

Newspaper texts published in the period between the end of World War II and the late 1950s in the Belgrade dailies Borba and Politika have been analyzed for the purpose of studying the process of how old age, as a social issue, has repeatedly "appeared" and "disappeared" from the public eye. These texts illustrate one of the fundamental tenets of constructionism that leads to reality perceived as, and provide insight into the reasons that this social problem, which dates back to the emergence of a burgeois civil society in 19th century Serbia, was perceived in the period studied as just constructed. In this way, it is possible to explain how before becomes after, and why newspapers refer to an old people’s home built no earlier than 1959 as the "first" home of its kind in Belgrade.

The paper considers the role of Niko Županić in the processes of translation of the anthropological and archaeological knowledges into the language of the political activism during the First World War and immediately after. As recorded by Sima Trojanović, Županić was employed at the Ethnographic Museum in Belgrade in May 1914, as "anthropological clerk" with the duty to "first of all measure the Serbian people, and only after that the foreigners on the Balkan Peninsula". He was officially stationed here up to 1922, although he spent the war years out of the country, involved in political activism, along with other Serbian and Yugoslav intellectuals, with the aim of creating the state of the Yugoslavs. At the outbreak of the First World War, Županić spent the first three months as a volunteer in Niš, and was then sent to Rome and London, where he took part in the activities of the Yugoslav Board. During 1916 the Serbian Government sent him to the United States, to secure the support of the American Slovenes for the Yugoslav idea. From 1915 till the end of the war, he wrote studies on the South Slavic past and political announcements, drew the borders of the desired territories, held speeches on the unity of the Serbs, Slovenes, and Croats. His book Ethnogenesis of the Yugoslavs (1920), written during the war and at first aimed at the English-speaking audience, richly illustrates the ways in which all these activities intertwined. Here Županić stresses the "creative potency of the blood and racial source" of brachycefaly of the Illyrian natives observed in the case of the Yugoslavs. The critical analysis and contextualization of this volume makes possible the new insights into the concepts of identity in the history of the Serbian anthropology and archaeology. This study did not receive much attention in the archaeological circles, but its ideas have subsequently, selectively and indirectly become the part of the history of the Serbian archaeology.

The paper represents an attempt to address the issue of ways in which the political potential of the retired population is constructed. This process can be divided into two distinct periods. The first started with the introduction of the multiparty system, when the political potential of pensioners was imbedded into the activities of the Socialist Party of Serbia which had been in power at the time. This indicates the failure of political parties of pensioners to construct the issue of retirees as a political, or broader social issue. The second period is characterized by the loss of influence of the SPS after the political changes of 2000, after which the Party of United Pensioners of Serbia (PUPS) was formed, in 2005, as an independent political organization. This party, finally, succeeded in constructing the political potential of pensioners as a resource, but it did so with the help of coalition partners among which the regenerated SPS is a major one, a fact which means that the process of construction continues relentlessly. The construed resource, for the political activities of the party as well as for the oldest part of society or pensioners as potential voters, is one of the major indicators of old age as a social issue in the "arena" it shares with other social issues.

Izveštaj o projektu "Definisanje jugoslovenskog kulturnog nasleđa".