The preliminary report covered the results of the fieldwork conducted in Soba (Sudan, Khartoum State) in 2021-2022. It includes a general description of the idea behind the project as well as results of geophysical surveys, archaeological excavations, pottery studies, analysis of macro organic remains and stone tools, ethnological research, and training program. 

The aim of this article is to outline the cultural perception of scars based on the analysis of survey results and narrations collected during in-depth interviews. Katarzyna Bem-Kukulska presents an elaborate division of scars and discusses the borderline and ambivalence of this phenomenon in relation to the concepts of beauty and ugliness. The key to defining scars turns out to be the origin of their appearance and the assessment of the society.

The bearers of Czech tramping, which arose more than a century ago and has undergone an extremely remarkable development, have always been primarily young men, to a lesser extent female. Their active hiking had lower and upper boundaries. While the lower limit was relatively strictly determined by reaching the age of majority, that is to say,the age of fifteen, the upper limit (that is, thepartial or definitive end of tramping activity and affiliation with the tramp community) was rather relative. The study focuses on covering the range of these cut-off points of active tramping, which were mostly identical to major life milestones (entry into basic military service, starting a professional career, entry into marriage, parenthood, or even death).

The text discusses the content of the source materials of the Polish Ethnographic Atlas relating to the culinary customs accompanying the celebration. Information from settlers and displaced people who came to Lower Silesia (current borders of the Lower Silesian Voivodeship) after World War II was taken into account. First of all, the researchers’ records and representations of the memory of the interviewees concerning Christmas Eve dishes eaten in their new place of residence were analyzed. These messages indicated both the process of transmission of some culinary traditions brought by the settlers and the changes taking place under the influence of intercultural contacts. The newcomers brought with them the knowledge of dishes appropriate for times of fasting. The most popular products were groats, selected vegetables (previously preserved) and forest mushrooms foraged in autumn. Despite the fact that the settlers came from different places, the dishes they prepared had almost the same composition; only the methods of their preparation and serving showed some differences. The status of these dishes was not uniform; some of them were still common during the research, while in the case of others, a gradual departure from the tradition of eating them was noticed. The impulse for these transformations was contact with people who often had very different culinary traditions.

This article reconstructs the perception of the Islamic State by the inhabitants of Northern Iraq, who in the years 2014–2016 lived under the rule of this quasi-state. This is a descriptive case study based on field research in Northern Iraq. It analyzes the perception of the peculiar, fundamentalist state-building process.
The main findings point out that the population of Northern Iraq initially perceived IS as a legitimate organization, mostly due to their religious credentials. Over time, under the IS rule, this perception changed into a negative one. The article identifies the main challenges of the administrative apparatus and the survival strategies of the inhabitants of Northern Iraq under the rule of a fundamentalist quasi-state.