El objetivo del trabajo es analizar la relación entre humanos y animales a lo largo del tiempo. En este contexto, buscamos puntualmente comprender el papel de estos últimos en los procesos de construcción identitaria de los grupos humanos de Sierras Centrales (Córdoba, centro de Argentina). Para ello, proponemos una perspectiva que integre herramientas metodológicas de la etnozoología, la historia y la arqueología. Desde el presente, abordamos el conocimiento ecológico local de las comunidades rurales, donde muchas familias llevan como apelativo el nombre de algún animal. En tanto, indagamos en los vínculos identificados en los documentos y trabajos históricos, lo que habilita rastrear cambios y continuidades de algunas prácticas sociales donde fueron mencionados los animales. Consideramos que la conjunción de estas líneas posibilita repensar la presencia de estos seres en las dinámicas sociales de las comunidades humanas del período Tardío (ca. 700-1550 dC), con base en el análisis de la iconografía zoomorfa del arte rupestre. La evidencia recuperada nos habilita a reconocer la continuidad del diálogo entre personas y animales como central en las dinámicas sociales, y cómo sus diferentes expresiones identitarias tuvieron lugar en distintos momentos históricos en las regiones objeto de estudio.

The concept of ethnicity has been largely omitted from recent interpretational models in European prehistoric archaeology. However, eagerness to avoid the problems associated with its past uses has left us with difficulties in talking about important aspects of collective identities in the past. This has become particularly clear as increasing attention has turned to understanding processes of migration and their underlying social dynamics. Here, we argue that a concept of ethnicity cast along the lines of Rogers Brubaker’s ‘ethnicity without groups’ provides us with a possibility to avoid the conceptual baggage of essentialist and static views of ethnic identities. Instead, it stresses the dynamic nature of collective identities and the social and political use of ethnicity. This is especially useful, we argue, for the study of prehistory and in periods of profound change, such as situations of migration. We use the historical Migration Period as a foil to discuss the Early Neolithic Linearbandkeramik and the third millennium B.C. Corded Ware and Bell Beaker phenomena to demonstrate how group-making and ethnicity formed and were transformed during migration processes.

The death of Mahsa Jina Amini at the hands of the Iranian police in September 2022 triggered protests both within Iran and across the global Iranian diaspora. This article explores how representations of collective memory and identity were articulated by the Iranian diaspora in Sweden at that time, exploring the concepts of memory, nostalgia, and identity, among others, through a constructionist framework. Key findings show hope as a central theme in diasporic engagement with the Woman, Life, Freedom protests, expressed as a desire for revolution and potential return to a liberated and democratic Iran. This study underscores the complex, multifaceted nature of diasporic activism, shaped by contested memories, subject-positions derived from lived experience and political interests, and historic and ongoing ideological tensions.

As a means for both the construction and communication of social identity in diverse human groups worldwide, objects of personal adornment can help to explain some prehistoric lifeways and beliefs. This study examines the materials and manufacture traces of whole and fragmentary pendants found in association with human burials at the Early Period (c. 4200 cal BC–cal AD 250) Ortiz site in south-western Puerto Rico. Using data from microscopy, elemental analysis and petrography, the authors propose that these pendants were a tangible manifestation of group identity, rooted in a sense of localised belonging, which persisted over almost a millennium.

This article examines the little-known experiences of children born of Chinese mothers and Japanese fathers who had consensual relationships during and after the Second Sino-Japanese War in China, with a specific focus on those who migrated to Japan after 1972. To understand how and why they—in their own words—“returned” to their “homeland,” this article analyzes historical circumstances as well as Sino-Japanese children’s experiences, identities, and belonging in comparison with other groups of “children born of war” in different historical and geopolitical settings. Their long-neglected stories point to a missing part in narratives of the 8-year war.

A brooch found in a mid-first-century AD context at the Roman port of Berenike, on the Red Sea coast of Egypt, represents the southernmost find of an Aucissa-type fibula. The item reflects the identity of its wearer, possibly a Roman soldier, for whom it may have held sentimental value.

Why do some politicians face greater backlash for using insensitive language against identity groups while others do not? Existing explanations focus either on the content of speech or the context in which it occurs. In this article, we propose an integrated framework that considers both and test it using a preregistered conjoint survey on a national U.S. sample. Our findings provide partial support for our expectations. Subjects react most negatively to insensitive speech when the target belongs to their own identity group, when aggravating circumstances exist, and when politicians are of an opposing political party. Our article extends growing scholarship on speech scandals, which has largely explained the fates of politicians as a function of a small number of causative variables in isolation.

This special issue stems from the 2022 Association for the Study of Modern Italy conference, reflecting on key turning points in modern Italian history through the lens of ‘small histories’. Drawing on contemporary international historiography and the contributions in the present volume, this introduction discusses how microhistorical, biographical and related approaches may challenge or refine dominant interpretations in that they abstract from ‘grand narratives’ to instead highlight dynamics and actors that may appear to be on the margins of major historical processes. The studies in this special issue engage in particular with the intersections of identity, space and memory. Themes such as Fascism, the reshaping of Italian identity through cultural policies and the creation of a collective memory, colonialism and postcolonialism, migration and evolving gender roles are explored in diverse contexts from interwar South Tyrol through to contemporary Palermo. Together, these ‘small histories’ demonstrate the methodological and interpretative richness of focused studies in tracing Italy’s transformation across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. They challenge binaries such as centre–periphery and local–global, while shedding new light on the relation between individual experiences and the creation of shared spaces, memories and identities.

Following the French example, the Meloni government has introduced the phrase ‘sovranità alimentare’ (sovereignty in food) into the title of the ministry of agriculture, and makes clear that it is engaging in a very determined effort to defend and promote the cultural heritage of Italian cuisine on all fronts, at home and abroad. But the origins of this impulse go back to the 1980s and the arrival of the McDonald’s hamburger chain, which gave birth to the Slow Food movement, now a global phenomenon. All this conceals several paradoxes: Italian cuisine has always been open to hybridised versions invented elsewhere (especially in America); production in key sectors, including wine, depends on large numbers of immigrant workers at a time when the government is trying to discourage immigration; and the ‘sovereignty in food’ concept unwittingly unites the government and some of its most radical opponents. But the very basis of this concept is challenged by the hyper-protectionist trade policy of the Trump administration.