This study describes the contemporary practice of livestock breeding and utilization by the sedentary agrarian Mongolians, in the eastern region of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Province, China, and reconsiders of what nomadic pastoralism is. Anthropological studies have focused on the mechanisms of domestication, mobility, livestock management, and pasturage techniques, and examined strategies for adaptation to arid regions. Mobility and livestock management are fundamental factors in nomadic pastoralism. Mobility was the main topic of discussion in related studies. Over the past few decades, the settlement of nomadic people and the changes in nomadic societies have been the main concerns of anthropologists who are interested in these patterns. Apart from mobility and livestock management, the question we should ask here is what has supported nomadic pastoralism? Being a fragile mode of production with low productivity and long production cycles, nomadic pastoralism is affected by periodic natural disasters. Therefore, it widely mixes agriculture, hunting, trade, and the subjugation of agricultural people, for items not produced by nomadic herders. Hence, the reconsideration of nomadic pastoralism deserves careful attention.

The purpose of this paper is to review the situation of children facing poverty in Japan's regional city, and to identify the deficiencies they complain about from their subjective viewpoints. Prior research on poverty has been conducted from a socio-centric perspective, primarily in sociology and social welfare studies. However, there is a gap between the identified issues and associated support, and what the concerned people consider to be the problem. Faced with various difficulties, restricted escape options, and limited relationships to rely on, the children seek, as a subjective deficiency, temporary refuge from their difficult homes and schools, the realization of their goals within the time and physical constraints arising from their family environment, and relationships that accept them as they are.

The case studies reveal that the three aspects of poverty - economic deprivation, relative deprivation, and subjective deficiency - are intricately interlinked in the situations faced by the children - interacting with each other and exacerbating problems. This paper examines these three aspects and their "way of life" they demonstrate.

The main issue of this special theme is to consider the relationships between Andean archaeology in Japan and the theoretical contexts of cultural and social anthropology.

Today, Archaeology and anthropology in Japan do not have a significant overlap in their theoretical themes. Nevertheless, from the beginning, Andean archaeologists in Japan have been strongly conscious of cultural anthropology while focusing on early ceremonial centers through archaeological researches. Their objectives were to obtain a rich corpus of empirical data through long-term and well-controlled excavations in order to understand the early formation process of Andean civilization. However, the relationship between archaeological research in the Andes and anthropological theory remains unclear.

Therefore, this special issue aims to open a dialogue between Andean archaeology in Japan and anthropology. It discusses how to approach the study of the ancient Andes, which deals with past material culture, from an archaeological perspective regarding theoretical themes shared with anthropology, such as theories of practice, materiality, and the agency of materials.

This article reconsiders the model of "Temple Renovation" which has been discussed by the Japanese anthropological archaeologists focusing on the Formative Period in the Andes. This model is based on the long-term and large-scale archaeological investigations and thus provide a solid empirical basis for building a model for interpreting architectural process of the Formative ceremonial centers in relation to the early formation process of the Andean Civilization. However, this model has not been fully examined in the context of archaeological and anthropological theories. Therefore, for the purpose of evaluating its possibilities for the future researches, this paper intends to contextualize "Temple Renovation" in the theoretical perspectives of the archaeologies of monument, which ranges from thermodynamic approaches to the practice theory and studies of materiality.

This study discusses two issues in the "Temple Renovation" Model – how public-monumental architecture initially emerged and why repetitive architectural renovations were conducted. On the north coast of Peru, a case study focusing on small mounds created by the middens of daily life, resulted in some sort of monumental construction. However, in the same region, exists some examples of early ceremonial centers constructed and renovated with stone debris removed from the surrounding area to maintain cultivated fields. What they have in common is that the emergence of monuments and their renovations can occur as an extension of repetitive discarding practices in daily life, which inevitably reflect social life. The intentional accumulation of these daily refuse suggests that depositional/discarding practices were conducted by recognizing the past, and social memory was constructed associating the refuse with the architecture. By containing the discarding practice, the initial ceremonial centers in the Andes inhabited a monumentality that connected various social lives tied to the materiality of the refuse.

This study discusses the process of interactive transformation between temples and societies, analyzing archaeological data obtained from excavations and interpreting people's actions related to social memories, from the perspective that temples built in the early Andean civilization are considered "monuments." Kuntur Wasi in the northern Peruvian highlands was a temple site from the middle to the end of the Formative Period. During the second phase of the chronology of the site, the temple was renovated by burying the past architecture and building a new large-scale structure. During the construction process, secondary burial rituals were performed specially for interred deceased individuals, and social memories were created through these practices. The "monumental" character of the new temple led to a variety of collaborative activities and architectural changes in the third phase, as well as to an increase in social complexity and interregional interaction. These interactions of memory, practice, and society with the temple were monument-related processes characteristic of the Formative Period of early Andean civilization.

This article discusses diverse activities related to social memory that took place in ceremonial centers, pivotal for social integration during the Andean Formative Period. Social memory generated through repeated constructions and rituals in ceremonial centers was not only cumulatively generated and inherited, but also constantly changing. Through this process, ceremonial centers became multifaceted, allowing for various overlapping social practices to occur. Social memory was generated in a multilayered manner by actions embedded in the ceremonial centers through the accumulation of different temporalities.

To discuss these phenomena, one needs to draw on the characteristics of archaeological data and recent theoretical perspectives on objects to examine the relationships between humans and materials in practices at ceremonial center, focusing on materiality, particularly physical properties. This article addresses this issue by evaluating the archaeological data from the Ingatambo site, located in the northernmost part of Peru, to capture the qualitative and quantitative changes in its architectural features and excavated artifacts over a long period.