Cultural contact and change in naming practices among the Aari of southwest Ethiopia
When people of different cultures interact, a degree of linguistic and/or cultural adaptation is expected. This paper examines the implication of the relationship between the Aari and the Gama for the naming practices of the former. The Aari people, who speak Araf, came into contact with Amharic-speaking migrants from central and northern Ethiopia (collectively called the Gama) during the southward expansion of Emperor Menelik in the late nineteenth century. Traditionally, the Aari people used names to express their collective history, shared life experiences, major events, and their environment. The incorporation of Aariland into the Ethiopian empire led to economic, political, and cultural domination as well as resistance on the part of the Aari. Personal names that characterize the period of struggle against the dominant migrants became common until the 1974 revolution that ended the Gama hegemony. Afterwards, however, the naming tradition suffered a setback as evidenced in the decline of Aari personal names in favour of Amhara names and the alteration of the spelling and pronunciation of Aari names. The new changes in naming practices compromised the role of the Aari language as an expression of culture and a marker of identity.
LEARNING PROCESS OF POTTERY MAKING AMONG ARI PEOPLE, SOUTHERN ETHIOPIA
Pots of Ari people are considered essential utilities in their daily lives. Women artisans, who belong to the socially segregated group called mana, are exclusively engaged in pottery making. In this paper, I describe the forming-technique and the learning process of pottery making among girls by focusing on the fine movement of pottery makers' hands and fingers, the making-stages, the making-processes and the learning orders by classifying the variety of pots. I found four characteristics of forming-techniques and learning processes among young pot- tery makers. First, 20 units of processes ('U.P') and four making-stages were common to all the pottery makers. Second, pottery makers do not learn each making stage step by step. From the very begining, they do all the making stages to form the whole shape of a pot. Third, according to the finger movement analysis, pottery makers could learn how to make different sizes and shapes of pots by using the 20 'U.P'. Fourth, although they say they have a certain degree of difficulty in forming various shapes of pots, young pottery makers do not follow a consistent order of learning. Each maker follows different sequential orders. Even sisters do not seem to pursue a consistent learning order. Pottery making is not just about technology as people attach social, cultural, and economic meanings to it.
Live birth in the Devonian period
The extinct placoderm fishes were the dominant group of vertebrates throughout the Middle Palaeozoic era, yet controversy about their relationships within the gnathostomes (jawed vertebrates) is partly due to different interpretations of their reproductive biology. Here we document the oldest record of a live-bearing vertebrate in a new ptyctodontid placoderm, Materpiscis attenboroughi gen. et sp. nov., from the Late Devonian Gogo Formation of Australia (approximately 380 million years ago). The new specimen, remarkably preserved in three dimensions, contains a single, intra-uterine embryo connected by a permineralized umbilical cord. An amorphous crystalline mass near the umbilical cord possibly represents the recrystallized yolk sac. Another ptyctodont from the Gogo Formation, Austroptyctodus gardineri, also shows three small embryos inside it in the same position. Ptyctodontids have already provided the oldest definite evidence for vertebrate copulation, and the new specimens confirm that some placoderms had a remarkably advanced reproductive biology, comparable to that of some modern sharks and rays. The new discovery points to internal fertilization and viviparity in vertebrates as originating earliest within placoderms.