The Tyrolean ice mummy known as Ötzi presents some of the earliest direct evidence of tattooing in the human past. Despite decades of study, it remains unclear how the Iceman's tattoos were created and what tools and methods were used. Popular discussions of the Iceman describe his tattoos as having been made by incision, first cutting the skin and then rubbing in pigment from the surface. The authors review the scholarly literature on the Iceman's tattoos and summarize ethnographic, historic, and anthropological research on global patterns of tattooing to contextualize the Iceman's marks within pre-electric tattooing traditions. The results of recent experimental tattooing studies are then compared to the physical signature of the Iceman's marks to evaluate existing claims and provide informed hypotheses as to how those tattoos were created.

In the early 20th century, Orissa, a province in British India, was marked by dismemberment and fragmentation. Nationalist leaders in colonial Orissa often portrayed the province as a disfigured mother to evoke nationalist sentiment among the Odia people and garner support for the unification of the Oriya-speaking tracts in adjacent provinces to form a separate and complete Orissa province. One painting from the period depicts a woman representing “Mother Orissa” being dissected on a table by an Englishman and surrounded by wolf-headed figures representing Bengal, Madras, and Bihar, who were opposed to the idea of Orissa’s unification. However, these leaders were careful not to create an environment of coercion and sought to allow for expressions of difference to foster a healthy national life. One way they did this was by trying to unite intrareligious groups in Orissa while also calling for the need to bring together people of different regions living in Orissa. Additionally, they balanced their allegiance and devotion among three mothers: Mother Orissa, Mother India, and Mother Victoria.

The article seeks to fill a gap in existing scholarship on explicit and implicit linguistic, ethnic, and national classifications in Habsburg schools and their effects. It attempts to reconstruct the classifications that appeared in textbooks and other teaching materials as well as in daily practice, pupils’ exposure to them, and their engagement with these categories. Temporally, the study begins with the establishment of compulsory education (1774) and ends in the revolutionary period of 1848–49 and focuses on the Slavophone population of the Habsburg crownlands Carniola, Carinthia, Styria, and the Austrian Littoral. Our research suggests that systematic and uniform classification schemes were not yet in place in the school environment in the period under review. As a result, the influence of classificatory systems on identifications was limited. If anything, the schools inadvertently reproduced existing local and provincial identifications while the students’ limited internalization of emerging transregional identifications only happened through their personal relationships with a few teachers and peers. The transition from familiarization with emerging transregional ethnolinguistic identifications through personal networks to the systemic (and often completely unintentional) reproduction of nationalist ideology happened only after 1848.

To survive over time, a diaspora must create sites of belonging and micro places in which to concentrate the main elements of its “iconography” that can consolidate social networks. This article analyzes how second-generation Greeks in Italy fit into diaspora networks by investigating the ways in which they define their sense of Greekness and use their ethnic resources. The findings of field research show a weakness of (formal and informal) social network ties and the pre-eminence of the family’s role in the process of sociocultural identification and ethnic identity construction. In fact, the second generation’s “ways of belonging” and the sense of attachment to Greece have an autonomous significance and are expressed more at a familial level and less collectively. Familial socialization plays a mediating role in the process of identification and transmission of Greekness, as well as in guiding ways of employing ethnic resources, contributing to the maintenance of the diaspora.

This article argues that the Rights of Nature (RoN) framework is compatible with various ideological outlooks and political options. As a result, those initiatives may translate into extremely diverse institutional implementations with contrasted outcomes in terms of power distribution. The institutional design of RoN has deep political implications for various social groups who hold conflicting claims over certain territories. Hence, rather than transforming human-nature relations, RoN primarily transform the power relations between human communities. I delve into three conceptual frameworks that could shape the recognition of RoN and explore their respective distributive implications: green colonialism, environmental justice, and the focus on Indigeneity. Through this critical engagement, I wish to warn against the illusion of a post-political ecology where an ecocentric legal declaration would deliver human-nature harmony without deep political battles, social tensions, and economic confrontations. RoN as an abstract notion does not offer a ready-made toolkit to dismantle the legal architecture of fossil capitalism; nor does it provide clear guidance on the distribution of costs and benefits of the green transition.