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Rosemary Joyce

Rosemary Joyce

@rajoyce.bsky.social

6K followers 1K following 9.1K posts

Archaeologist, anthropologist, once upon a time blogger. Author “The Future of Nuclear Waste”, “Ancient Bodies, Ancient Lives”, “Sites, Traces and Materiality”. Distinguished Professor Emerita of Anthropology, UC Berkeley, Honorary PhD, Leiden Univ .. more

Rosemary A. Joyce is an American anthropologist and social archaeologist who has specialized in research in Honduras. She was able to archeologically confirm that chocolate was a byproduct of fermenting beer. She is also an expert in evaluating the archaeological records of society and the implications that sexuality and gender play in culture. .. more

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Rosemary Joyce @rajoyce.bsky.social · 13d

This is who runs this account

Photo of a child with curly blonde hair seated inside a television cabinet, looking out at the viewer through the glass. The CRT tube has been removed but she is on TV.

Rosemary Joyce @rajoyce.bsky.social · 18h

—Rita Dove, “Heart to Heart”

Rosemary Joyce @rajoyce.bsky.social · 18h

but I can’t open it:
there’s no key.
I can’t wear it
on my sleeve,
or tell you from
the bottom of it
how I feel. Here,
it’s all yours, now—
but you’ll have
to take me,
too.

Rosemary Joyce @rajoyce.bsky.social · 18h

It doesn’t have
a tip to spin on,
it isn’t even
shapely—
just a thick clutch
of muscle,
lopsided,
mute. Still,
I feel it inside
its cage sounding
a dull tattoo:
“I want, I want”—

Rosemary Joyce @rajoyce.bsky.social · 18h

It’s neither red
nor sweet.
It doesn’t melt
or turn over,
break or harden,
so it can’t feel
pain,
yearning,
regret.

Rosemary Joyce @rajoyce.bsky.social · 18h

Adding: should note that “Christian” here is absolutely a necessary condition: the roots of the anxiety of casta are in the Reconquista, the unsuccessful attempt to purge Spain of the legacy of Islamic Andalusia, with its religious openness, cultivation of science and medicine.

Rosemary Joyce @rajoyce.bsky.social · 18h

7/7 So it’s less ironic and more a case of self-recolonization. On some level he (and Cruz) know they are only white by exception and he’s performing that ultra-whitening.

Rosemary Joyce @rajoyce.bsky.social · 18h

6/ Cuba is not my focus but I think Rubio— whose name literally means “blonde”— is likely from a white-identifying Creole class that was desperate to align with the real white Christian Iberians and disclaim any of the enervation of the Americas or mixing with racialized others.

Rosemary Joyce @rajoyce.bsky.social · 18h

5/ Criollos became pro independence from Spain in part because they were looked at askance by Iberian folks. Independence movements had different levels of participation by people of different castas. Racialized self-awareness fed things like the war of Maya people in Yucatán against Mexico.

Rosemary Joyce @rajoyce.bsky.social · 18h

4/ in the casta system, as with whiteness today, you weren’t supposed to need a definition of white. It was all those pesky others that needed detection, via habits, food ways, and appearance cues, that had to be defined. And that proved difficult which made Criollo whiteness uncertain.

Rosemary Joyce @rajoyce.bsky.social · 18h

3/ where Criollos in theory were assumed to be descended from all white, European, Christian ancestors, other people’s racial composition was suspect. By the time European powers tried to discipline this alliances in societies of the Americas crossed all the boundaries the system wanted to impose.

Rosemary Joyce @rajoyce.bsky.social · 18h

2/ Criollos were viewed as potentially a racial failure, because of the environment they grew up in. And lurking behind that was the “?” on their whiteness, which is where the distinction intersects with the casta system. That’s the system in which proliferating terms tried to pin down all mixtures.

Rosemary Joyce @rajoyce.bsky.social · 18h

That’s the casta system, which is related but different. “Creole” is English for “Criollo”— possibly from the verb for “to be raised”— the word used to distinguish Iberian Spanish (white) folk from Spanish (white?) folk of the Americas. Iberians thought being born in the Americas diluted vigor. 1/

Reposted by Rosemary A. Joyce

Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · 22h

Anyway The Beatles were so bored of European culture they wanted to be Chuck Berry, and the Rolling Stones were so desperate to find escape from their culture that they wanted to be Muddy Waters. But sure little Marco, it’s Columbus, cathedrals and Michelangelo paintings all the way down.

Reposted by Anna O. Law, Rosemary A. Joyce, Rebecca Tushnet , and 4 more Anna O. Law, Rosemary A. Joyce, Rebecca Tushnet, Lesley Bartlett, Julie Novkov, Ernesto Castañeda, David Darmofal

Frank Figliuzzi @frankfigliuzzi.bsky.social · 1d

NYT: Trump secretly deported 9 migrants despite court orders to not remove them to their home nations. So, he sent them to prison in Cameroon: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/14/w...

U.S. Deports Nine Migrants in Secret, Ignoring Legal Protections

www.nytimes.com

Reposted by Rosemary A. Joyce, Henning Melber, Manisha Sinha

Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · 1d

Secretary of State Marco Rubio giving a speech that is basically an extended version of the ethnonationalist Proud Boys oath: “I'm a proud Western chauvinist, I refuse to apologize for creating the modern world.”

Evan Bernick, a finite mode with a smol hooman and a lorg floof @evanbernick.bsky.social · 1d

The Rubio speech really is appalling, and if you haven’t read it yet, you should.

www.state.gov/releases/off...

this continent long before. The man who settled and built the nation of my birth arrived on our shores carrying the
memories and the traditions and the Christian faith of their ancestors as a sacred inheritance, an unbreakable link
between the old world and the new. We are part of one civilization - Western civilization. We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the
common civilization to which we have
fallen heir.

Reposted by Brendan Nyhan, Rosemary A. Joyce, Caroline T. Schroeder , and 1 more Brendan Nyhan, Rosemary A. Joyce, Caroline T. Schroeder, Susan D. Amussen

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 1d

i’ll end this little brainstorm by just asking what it is, exactly, that the MAGA right likes about the United States, since it explicitly rejects those things that make this nation distinctive — its pluralism, its revolutionary heritage and egalitarian aspirations, and its republican institutions

Reposted by Rosemary A. Joyce

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 1d

(there is something very funny also about Rubio adopting a late 18th century european chauvinist’s contempt for ‘creole’ peoples. like, dude, you’re *cuban*)

Reposted by Rosemary A. Joyce, Nathan P. Kalmoe

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 1d

(put another way, weird to say, as Rubio does, that Europe produced “the genius…of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones,” who were self-consciously playing music rooted in the traditions of the African diaspora.)

Reposted by Rosemary A. Joyce, Suzanne Conklin Akbari

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 1d

(worth saying here that this formulation of “western civilization” curiously isolates Europe from the Middle East and Africa, as if you can understand European “civilization” outside the context of its interactions with and integration into those worlds)

Reposted by Rosemary A. Joyce, Suzanne Conklin Akbari

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 1d

“western civilization” in this construction should be juxtaposed *against* the american tradition.

Reposted by Brendan Nyhan, Scott L. Greer, Rosemary A. Joyce , and 1 more Brendan Nyhan, Scott L. Greer, Rosemary A. Joyce, Suzanne Conklin Akbari

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 1d

it has more in common, in fact, with with the antebellum slaveholder preoccupation with (its vision of) medieval europe, a romantic notion of Anglo supremacy that you can see articulated, in similar form, during the early days of american imperialism at the turn of the 20th century.

Reposted by Brendan Nyhan, Rosemary A. Joyce, Nathan P. Kalmoe

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 1d

rubio’s invocation of “western civilization” — defined here as racial and religious chauvinism, if not outright supremacy — is a rejection of the more egalitarian and universalistic notions that came out of america’s two revolutions.

Reposted by Rosemary A. Joyce

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 1d

four score and seven years later, lincoln would defend the american experiment in similar terms, rooting the the war effort in a defense of freedom and equality — those were the things that made american civilization distinctive in his telling.

Reposted by Rosemary A. Joyce, Robert Black, Suzanne Conklin Akbari , and 2 more Rosemary A. Joyce, Robert Black, Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Nathan P. Kalmoe

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 1d

interesting to think that revolutionary era americans understood themselves as making a break with the “old world” and establishing a new civilization. and crucially, this new civilization rested on republican self-government, not “sovereignty.”

Evan Bernick, a finite mode with a smol hooman and a lorg floof @evanbernick.bsky.social · 1d

The Rubio speech really is appalling, and if you haven’t read it yet, you should.

www.state.gov/releases/off...

this continent long before. The man who settled and built the nation of my birth arrived on our shores carrying the
memories and the traditions and the Christian faith of their ancestors as a sacred inheritance, an unbreakable link
between the old world and the new. We are part of one civilization - Western civilization. We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the
common civilization to which we have
fallen heir.

Reposted by Will Jennings, Steve Peers, Tim Bale , and 3 more Will Jennings, Steve Peers, Tim Bale, Rosemary A. Joyce, Nathan P. Kalmoe, Timothy D. McBride

G Elliott Morris @gelliottmorris.com · 1d

This poll from CBS News/YouGov contradicts the popular claim that voters think Democrats are as ideologically extreme as Republicans

Reposted by Rosemary A. Joyce

Anna Holmes @annabookwriter.bsky.social · 1d

It is also not something we should be using on right wingers. Why?

Well, not because I am worried about their feelings. Because there’s tons of research showing that if you start using dehumanizing language even ironically, it becomes easier and easier to access.

Reposted by Rosemary A. Joyce

Anna Holmes @annabookwriter.bsky.social · 1d

*pinches nose*

Time for your quarterly reminder that degenerate is a Nazi term, indicating the literal degeneration of a gene pool. Things this referred to: interracial marriage! Queerness! Disability!

It pretty much indicates they don’t think you’re human!

It’s not a cutesy way to say “leftist”

Reposted by Anna O. Law, Rosemary A. Joyce

Your Internet Friend Tom Tomorrow @tomtomorrow.bsky.social · 1d

normie centrists everywhere: my god ICE is monstrous and must be stopped

chuck schumer: maybe *two* body cams

Reposted by Rosemary A. Joyce

southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social · 1d

UK government: “consistent, collaborative work has confirmed through laboratory testing that the deadly toxin found in the skin of Ecuador dart frogs (epibatidine) was found in samples from Alexei Navalny’s body and highly likely resulted in his death” www.gov.uk/government/n...

UK confirms Russia poisoned Navalny in prison with rare toxin

UK and partners are today exposing the tragic circumstances surrounding Alexei Navalny's death and have confirmed there was poison found in samples from his body.

Rosemary Joyce @rajoyce.bsky.social · 1d

—Maya Angelou, “Caged Bird”