Journal articles on the topic 'Carved bone artifacts'

AbstractEngraved and carved bone and stone artifacts capture our imaginations and are known worldwide from archaeological contexts, but they are seemingly rare and oftentimes difficult to recognize. While preservation issues play a role in the limited recovery of early art objects, research on incised stones and bone from the Gault site in Texas demonstrates that an expectation to find such artifacts plays a key role in their identification and recovery. The presence of incised stones found by collectors at Gault alerted archaeologists to the potential for finding early art in systematic excavations. To date, 11 incised stones and one engraved bone of Paleoindian age (13,000–9,000 calibrated years before present) have been recovered and of these, the Clovis artifacts are among the earliest portable art objects from secure context in North America. The presence of incised stone and bone at Gault led to the development of an examination protocol for identifying and analyzing engraved and incised artifacts that can be applied to a wide variety of archaeological contexts.

The analysis of osseous (bone, antler, or ivory) beveled shafts or “rods” has become an important focus in the study of early Paleoindian tool technology. Since 1995 two carved and beveled bone rods have been recovered from Sheriden Cave in northwest Ohio in depositional strata that are radiocarbon dated to between 11,060 and 10,400 radiocarbon years B.P. These strata also contained a small, reworked, Gainey-style fluted point; cut and burned animal bone; and the remains of flat-headed peccary, caribou, giant beaver, and other taxa. The tapered tips and overall morphology of the bone rods demonstrate that they served as projectile points as opposed to other functional types such as foreshafts. Microscopic and radiographic examinations of the bone points reveal that they were manufactured from split sections of mega-mammal bone. These artifacts resemble bone and ivory points found at early Paleoindian sites in western North America and northern Florida but also bear significant morphological similarities to bone sagaie or javelin tips known from Upper Paleolithic sites in Europe. The close spatial and temporal associations between the Sheriden Cave artifacts suggest that they represent the remains of an early Paleoindian tool cache within a small resource extraction campsite.

Two Iron Age settlements, Tuzusai and Taldy Bulak 2 (ca. 500 BC to 1 CE), located in southeastern Kazakhstan on the Talgar alluvial fan north of the Tian Shan range, have yielded a small collection of bone, antler/horn, bronze, and stone artifacts with an affinity to the nomadic art of the first millennium BC. Both settlements date within the period of late Saka culture. Two pieces have decorative ornamentations with zoomorphic imagery: a small carved fragment with carved images of a wing and an ear and a perforated bone disk with the carving of three birds’ heads. The other artifacts include objects associated with Saka weaponry or nomadic economy, such as two horn psalias (cheek pieces) and a bronze amulet. A carnelian bead will also be described as an imported object. These special finds were found on the occupation floors of mud brick houses and in the pit houses of settlements, not in grave or burial contexts. The objects were placed in a stratigraphic sequence in the settlement sites. The method for placing these objects within the chronological framework of “animal-style art” is through comparisons with similar objects found throughout Eurasia—a method used in Soviet and post-Soviet archaeology. The results show that the functional and stylistic elements of the six objects indicate that the Talgar settlements were part of a larger world-system of trade and communication along the early Silk Route(s).

Se presenta una propuesta sobre el uso de un artefacto de hueso labrado encontrado en el entierro de la se&ntilde;ora Ix K&#39;abal Xook de Yaxchil&aacute;n, M&eacute;xico. Se propone que era una herramienta usada para la elaboraci&oacute;n de tejidos. ENGLISH: <em>Possible Use of a Bone Artifact from Tomb 2 of Structure 23 in Yaxchilan, Mexico</em>. This article discusses a proposal for the use of a carved bone artifact found in the burial of the Queen Ix K&#39;abal Xook in Yaxchilan, Mexico. It suggests that it was used for weaving fabric.

The article presents an analysis of the raw materials of carved bones from the Yugachi-2 site. In the course of field archaeological works, the recovered materials made it possible to interpret the studied object as a settlement complex. The items with bone carving are described. The total number of artifacts made of horn and bone is 79 specimens, which were recovered from 14 out of 74 excavation pits, their brief description is provided. Spatial analysis bone carving products distribution was carried out at excavation pit No. 9 of excavation trench No. 3. Most of the finished products and blanks for bone carving come from this site. Weapons, tools and ornaments are the most interesting finds among the found objects. The horny frontal middle plate of the compound bow deserves special notice in the armament category. Bows with similar frontal rigid plates have parallels in the burial complexes of the Altai Mountains dating from the first half of the 1st millennium AD. Hence, this object can be dated to the 3rd-5th centuries AD. A bony stemmed arrowhead was also found. The ornament category contains a pendant from a maral tooth. The labor tools are represented by tools for untie knots (kochedygi), a borer, and, probably, a handle fragment. The derived information provide the insight into bone carving technology at the settlement sites of the transitional Tagar-Tashtyk period and its place in the culture of the ancient population living at the foothills of the Western Sayan Mountains, in the periphery of the taiga and forest-steppe zones, in the Askiz River basin.

The present research featured a slotted, or liner, bone dagger from the Neolithic layer of the Ust-Narym settlement on the Irtysh River. Its design, material processing technology, and functional purpose make it a rare, as well as the most ancient example of hand-to-hand combat weapons found in Kazakhstan. This composite object was carved from the posterior left metatarsal bone of a wild auroch with the help of several tools. It includes thin and sharp flint inserts, which were attached into the grooves on the side faces of the dagger frame with a special adhesive substance. An additional nozzle for a short handle made it possible to use this piercing-cutting weapon in battle. It is decorated with dots and circles connected by straight lines, which probably means it was a socialized object of ritual use associated with sacrifice. Typologically, the dagger from Ust-Narym is similar to artifacts found in the Late Paleolithic and Mesolithic sites in the south of Western Siberia, in the Urals, in the Baikal region, and in Eastern Europe. The dagger marks a milestone in the technical and technological development of ancient Eurasian peoples. It also illustrates the ethno-social and cultural processes across the vast territory of Eurasia.

We present the results of a technological analysis of details of the horse harness—the most numerous and the most representative category of wooden artifacts found in the Scythian Age (Pazyryk) tombs. Basic techniques and specific operations involved in the manufacturing of horse masks are described. Especially noteworthy are the tops of these masks, fashioned like horns of mountain goats. Such masks were found in nearly all high-ranking burials. We reconstruct the carpentry of the Early Iron Age nomads. Wooden horns, being the principal elements of the horse’s headgear, differ in terms of technique and complexity: some are solid, while others are composed of two and more parts. In terms of size and shape, some horns are robust, and some are thin and elegant. Separate groups include composite horns with sophisticated carved figurines of feline carnivores, bone collets, bipartite semicircular inserts, and leather tops shaped like antlers. The analysis of horse harness decoration from burials differing in status suggests that wooden horns were mostly attributes of the nomadic elite members. Their size, accessory ornaments, and intricacy were markers of social status.

This report examines 10,845 lithic artifacts from the rapidly abandoned city of Aguateca, Guatemala, to elucidate elite artistic and craft production in Classic Maya society. The methods used include high-power microwear analysis. The results suggest that significant numbers of Maya elite, both men and women, engaged in artistic creation and craft production, often working in both attached and independent contexts. The royal family and other elite households produced many artistic and craft items, including wood carvings and hide or leather goods. The scribe inhabiting Structure M8-8 carved stelae for the ruler, and the high-status courtier/scribe living in Structure M8-4 emphasized the production of shell and bone objects and other royal regalia in a courtly setting. Clearly, Aguateca was a center of part-time production of both utilitarian and luxury goods as well as of consumption. Classic Maya elite men and women artists/craft producers possessed multiple social identities and roles, which in turn implies a more flexible and integrated system of Classic Maya elite participating in attached and independent craft production more than is usually proposed.

General information on archaeological excavations at the Kazanovka-14 site in 2021 is presented. The site is located on the right bank of the Askiz river on a small elevation above the floodplain at the foothills of the Abakansky mountain range. In 2020, mounds of the Late Bronze Age and Tagar culture of the Kazanovka-12 burial ground in the immediate vicinity of the camp were investigated. The site consists of a cultural layer deposited on a dealluvialplume at a relatively shallow depth from the present day surface. The cultural layer includes both scattered artifacts and bone material as well as the remains of a burnt construction with a series of pottery vessels. The archaeological material is unevenly deposited, with isolated concentration spots of animal bones, including processed bones. The archeological assemblage includes various ceramics (vessels of the different sizes, (mainly of the opened form, with a recessed and rounded rim, ornamentation of the top part in the form of dangling triangles, semicircular and triangular indentations), weaponry (arrowheads made of bone, as a rule, elongated-rhombic, and metal, tiered; fragment of an armor plate), fragments of clothing (belt cover plates). Among the finds, sandstone tiles with carved images stand out. On the basis of the finds complex, the site dates to the later stages of the Tashtyk epoch (middle of the 1st millenium A.D.). The surviving outskirts of the settlement, with preserved evidence of active bone carving and possibly ceramic production were excavated and examined. Given the small number of investigated settlement sites in the Khakass-Minusinsk Basin, Kazanovka-14 represents unique opportunities to characterize the economic life of the Tashtyk population and correlate the household and funerary object complexes known from the crypts.

ABSTRACTThe Zhengzhou Shang dynasty site is the location of an early Shang city, vast in area and abundant in archaeological remains, which was discovered by Chinese archaeologists in the middle and lower Yellow River basin during the early fifties. Within the site there is a Shang dynasty rammed-earth wall extending north-south in a rectangular shape and having a circumference of 6960 meters. These are the earliest Shang wall remains discovered to date.Based on the stratigraphy and vessel types discovered in the course of excavating the four sides of the wall, it is certain that this wall is slightly later than the late Erlitou period, and that construction on it began before the lower strata of the Shang Erligang period, the “Yin Ruins” at Anyang. The discovery of the Zhengzhou Shang site was definitely not accidental. It represents an important stage in the development of ancient Chinese rammed-earth wall architecture. The method of construction places it in a continuous line of development from the rammed-earth wall of the Henan area middle and late Longshan culture and the late Erlitou rammed-earth platform foundation to the rammed-earth foundations of the palaces of the Yin Ruins at Anyang.The grand scale of the Zhengzhou Shang wall, and the fact that inside and outside the wall were found palace foundations and workshops for the production of bronze, bone, and ceramic articles as well as numerous widespread storage pits, wells, ditches, house foundations, and tombs, and that many bronze, jade, primitive porcelain, pottery, stone, bone, and clamshell artifacts have been excavated here, including also some carved ivory pieces, pottery sculpture, and inscribed bones and pottery, lead us to conclude that the Zhengzhou Shang site was one of the early Shang capitals. Whether it is to be identified as Ao or Bo we cannot now say. In any case, the discovery and excavation of this site has supplied direct evidence of the greatest importance for the history of early Shang politics, economics, cultural, and military affairs.

Abstract Excavations over the course of the 2012 and 2013 seasons at Poggio Civitate (Murlo) have revealed the presence of domestic architecture in an area immediately to the southwest of the Piano del Tesoro plateau, the portion of Poggio Civitate that preserves evidence of monumental building from the Orientalizing and Archaic phases of the site’s occupation. At least two building phases have been discovered in the eastern extent of the hill’s Civitate A property zone and they reveal that a small rectilinear structure dating to the late seventh century BCE was superimposed on an earlier, curvilinear structure. These architectural discoveries indicate that the opulent Orientalizing structures on the Piano del Tesoro plateau were not only visible to people on nearby hilltops, but also to a community that stood to its immediate west. While additional excavation is needed to clarify a number of questions about Civitate A, it is striking that its inhabitants appear to have had access to at least a few items of notable quality and potential social value, many of which were also used by the social elite living on the plateau. In addition, the number of planed, cut and carved antler, horn and bone objects and fragments recovered within the interior area of Structure 1 raises the possibility that artisans employed in the service of Poggio Civitate’s ruling elite created similar artifacts for their own domestic arena. Future excavations both in Civitate A as well as on other hilltop settlements in the region of Murlo should provide even greater insight into these and many other questions concerning this remarkably well-preserved site and the activities of its ancient inhabitants.

The search for the Middle Neolithic burial complexes in Baikal-Yenisei Siberia is one of the most important fields of modern regional research. It is directly related to the problem of the so-called hiatus, which is characterized by the absence of dated burials for several hundred years between the Early and Late Neolithic in the range of ~7–5.5 ka cal BP (or ~6.6–6 ka cal BP to updated data). We see the greatest prospects at this stage of research in identifying the burials of hunter-gatherers who owned the technique of making Ust-Belaya pottery, so the connection of this ceramic type with some burials is already quite clear. This article proposes a new view on the cultural and chronological affiliation of the Ust-Ilir burial ground, which was discovered in 1990 at the mouth of the Ilir River, the left tributary of the Iya River (Southern Angara region). It is distinguished by the originality of the mortuary rite and inventory and stands out against the background of the known Neolithic burial complexes in Baikal-Yenisei Siberia. In the grave, partially destroyed by the Bratsk Reservoir, the remains of three people, fire traces and “ocher” spots (powdered red mineral pigment) were found. During the excavation of the burial, along with various tools, bone needle cases with carved ornaments, pendants from deer teeth, and bone pendants that imitate the latter in shape, unique objects of art were found - miniature bone sculptures with images of waterfowl. In addition, on the beach where the burial was discovered, exhibited finds were collected, including stone and bone tools, as well as fragments of ceramics of the Ust-Belaya type, which most likely belong to this complex. As a result of the analysis of the elements of mortuary rite and inventory of the Ust-Ilir burial ground, its similarity to some Neolithic burials of Krasnoyarsk, the Northern and Southern Angara region, whose cultural and chronological affiliation has not yet been clearly defined, has been established. The closest to Ust-Ilir is the burial complex discovered in 1959 in Krasnoyarsk near the Gremyachii Klyuch stream, in the materials of which there are similar artifacts with images of waterfowl and needle cases with an ornament. We recently obtained a radiocarbon date for this complex from a deer bone sample (from the inventory), which shows its age at 5280±25 BP (6182–5943 cal BP). Given the above facts, the Ust-Ilir burial ground can be synchronous with the Gremyachii Klyuch burial. These complexes, as well as burials close to them from other areas of Baikal-Yenisei Siberia, with a high degree of probability could have belonged to hunter-gatherers who own the Ust-Belaya pottery tradition and inhabited the region in the Middle Neolithic.

Bone carvings (and other ivory substitutes) are common in the modern-day lucrative international ivory trade. Souvenirs for unknowing travelers and market shoppers can be made of non-biological material (plastic "ivory" beads) or skillfully crafted natural objects made to resemble something other than their true origin. Many of these items are received at the U. S. National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory (NFWFL) for species identification as part of law enforcement investigations. Morphologists at the Lab often receive uniquely carved ivory items that have been imported with little or no documentation. In recent years, analysts examined several purported ivory tusks suspected to be walrus, a protected marine mammal. After examination, the Lab determined their origin as carved leg bones of cattle using principles and methods of zooarchaeology and ancient DNA analysis. The naturally long and straight ungulate metapodials had been cut, carved, filled, stained, and polished to closely resemble unmodified ivory tusks. Morphological species identification of these bones proved to be a challenge since diagnostic characters of the bones had been altered and country of origin was unknown. Genetic analysis showed that the bones originated from cattle. While bone is commonly used as a substitute for ivory, this style of artifact was not previously documented in the wildlife trade prior to our analysis. Archaeological ethnobiologists commonly encounter bone tools and other forms of material culture from prehistoric and historic contexts; in this case bone tools come from a modern context, thus the application of methods common in zooarchaeology are situated in wildlife forensics. In addition, results reported here pertain to cross-cultural ivory trade and conservation science.

Abstract: In 2017, during the archaeological excavations of room N24 of the Palace of Dedoplis Gora (Caucasian Iberia, Georgia), built in the 2nd–1st c. BCE, fragments of a small statuette carved from bone were discovered. The statuette is a miniature sphinx with a human head and may have been an element of furniture. The male head is adorned with the nemes, a headdress worn by pharaohs. In this article, I suggest that the head of the sphinx may portray Ptolemy I Soter, the first king of Ptolemaic Egypt. Some scholars believe that artifacts containing Ptolemaic portraits came to Georgia among diplomatic gifts sent by Mark Antony to Pharnabazos II, for it was he who had close relationships with the Ptolemaic court. In my opinion the bone sphinx with the head of Ptolemy I appeared in Caucasian Iberia together with these items.

Basque and French shepherds in California’s White Mountains built dry stone shelters that persist today. Despite French names carved on logs associated with a few of these structures, the typical pattern for these shelters is Basque: they closely resemble the cabañas pastoriles (shepherd’s huts) of Bizkaia. A square floor plan with walls about one meter high enclose a single chamber. The stone work is carefully laid to make one wall face. A narrow doorway, often in a corner, faces downhill in any direction except west and can be flanked by low stone “spurs”. A fireplace is usually built into the south wall. Boulders too large to move are usually in the western wall or northwest corner. Metal, glass, wood, bone or leather artifacts are present. Typically Basque arborglyphs (carvings in aspen trees) are found nearby at lower elevations. It is unclear whether the White Mountains shelters originally had roofs.

Abstract The two-figure image of a drink-bearer facing a horse occupies the central space on the much debated right-side panel of the Franks Casket. This essay makes two claims about that dual image. First, the abundance of clearly female drink-bearers in early medieval English and Scandinavian texts and artifacts gives good reason to interpret the more ambiguous figure on the Franks Casket panel as also female and the hovering object before her as the drink she is meant to be bearing. The second and major claim, depending upon the first, is that the two-figure image carved on the whale-bone casket in Northumbria bears a close iconographic relationship to the image of a woman with a drinking horn facing a horse on memorial stones in Swedish Gotland. Moreover, the unusual feature of triquetrae between the horses’ legs in both locations strongly suggests that these separately imagined scenes on different types of artifacts refer to a shared, widely distributed and variably expressed, mortuary performance typically conducted by a female ritual specialist, a performance associated with a horse that implies a journey to the land of the dead. A brief exploration of the archaeology of buried horses and a real-world witness of a mortuary performance support this interpretation of the Franks Casket scene, and the addendum at the end provides further supportive literary texts and discussion.

Abstract In August 1994, the Anyang Team, Institute of Archaeology of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences excavated tomb M793 at Liujiazhuang North in Yinxu, Anyang City, Henan Province. It is a vertical earthen pit tomb equipped with one coffin, one burial chamber, and a waist pit. Pottery, bronze, jade, stone, bone, and shell artifacts were unearthed. Tomb M793 yielded bronze assemblages with inscriptions of “Yajiang” 亚弜, suggesting that the neighboring area was likely where the Yajiang clan dwelled. The characteristics of grave goods suggest that the tomb dates approximately to the late stage of Yinxu Phase II. Bronze inscriptions and the size of the tomb chamber indicate that the tomb occupant was a minor leader of the Yajiang or Jiang clan, a member of the Jiang people recorded in oracle bone inscriptions, rather than the main leader of the Yajiang or Jiang clan. This excavation provides crucial clues for confirming Liujiazhuang North as one of the significant settlements for the Yajiang or Jiang clan.

Abstract The Anyang Team of Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences conducted five excavations of a bronze foundry site at the Huanbei Shang City from 2015 to 2019. A variety of archaeological features were discovered, ranging from the foundation built from calcareous nodules and rammed earth, bronze melting and casting area, refuse area, sacrificial pit, ash pit, well, and cache pit. Many artifacts related to metallurgy were also unearthed, including clay molds, models, cores, bellow nozzles, slag, furnace fragments, charcoal, bone gravers, and whetstones. The discovery of this bronze foundry site is of great value for the study of the Huanbei Shang City layout, the operation, and management of bronze casting, technological transmission, and other questions. Bronze casting technology at Huanbei Shang City was still in its early stages of development, but it laid a solid foundation for the later flourishing of the bronze civilization at Yinxu.

The first uncomfortable twinges started when I was a grad student, churning out my Master’s thesis on a laptop that I worked on at the library, in my bedroom, on the kitchen table, and at the coffee shop. By the last few months, typing was becoming uncomfortable for my arms, but as any thesis writer will tell you, your whole body is uncomfortable with the endless hours sitting, inputting, and revising. I didn’t think much of it until I moved on to a new city to start a PhD program. Now the burning that accompanied my essay-typing binges started to worry me more, especially since I noticed the twinges didn’t go away when I got up to chat with my roommate, or to go to bed. I finally mentioned the annoying arm to Sonja, a medical student friend of mine visiting me one afternoon. She asked me to pick up a chair in front of me, palms out. I did, and the attempt stabbed pain up my arm and through my elbow joint. The chair fell out of my hands. We looked at each other, eyebrows raised.Six months and much computer work later, I still hadn’t really addressed the issue. Who had time? Chasing mystery ailments around and more importantly, doing any less typing were not high on my likely list. But like the proverbial frog in slowly heated water, things had gotten much worse without my really acknowledging it. That is, until the day I got up from my laptop, stretched out and wandered into the kitchen to put some pasta on to boil. When the spaghetti was ready, I grabbed the pot to drain it and my right arm gave as if someone had just handed me a 200-pound weight. The pot, pasta and boiling water hit the floor with a scalding splash that nearly missed both me and the fleeing cat. Maybe there was a problem here.Both popular and critical understandings of the body have been in a great deal of flux over the past three or four decades as digital media technologies have become ever more pervasive and personal. Interfacing with the popular Internet, video games, mobile devices, wearable computing, and other new media technologies have prompted many to reflect on and reconsider what it means to be an embodied human being in an increasingly digitally determined era. As a result, the body, at various times in this recent history, has been theoretically disowned, disavowed, discarded, disdained, replaced, idealised, essentialised, hollowed out, re-occupied, dismembered, reconstituted, reclaimed and re-imagined in light of new media. Despite all of the angst over the relationships our embodied selves have had to digital media, of course, our embodied selves have endured. It remains true, that “even in the age of technosocial subjects, life is lived through bodies” (Stone 113).How we understand our embodiments and their entanglements with technologies matter deeply, moreover, for these understandings shape not only discourse around embodiment and media, but also the very bodies and media in question in very real ways. For example, a long-held tenet in both popular culture and academic work has been the notion that media technologies extend our bodies and our senses as technological prostheses. The idea here is that media technologies work like prostheses that extend the reach of our eyes, ears, voice, touch, and other bodily abilities through time and space, augmenting our abilities to experience and influence the world.Canadian media scholar Marshall McLuhan is one influential proponent of this notion, and claimed that, in fact, “the central purpose of all my work is to convey this message, that by understanding media as they extend man, we gain a measure of control over them” (McLuhan and Zingrone 265). Other more contemporary media scholars reflect on how “our prosthetic technological extensions enable us to amplify and extend ourselves in ways that profoundly affect the nature and scale of human communication” (Cleland 75), and suggest that a media technology such as one’s mobile device, can act “as a prosthesis that supports the individual in their interactions with the world” (Glitsos 161). Popular and commercial discourses also frequently make use of this idea, from the 1980’s AT&amp;T ad campaign that nudged you to “Reach out and Touch Someone” via the telephone, to Texas Instruments’s claim in the 1990’s that their products were “Extending Your Reach”, to Nikon’s contemporary nudge to “See Much Further” with the prosthetic assistance of their cameras. The etymology of the term “prosthesis” reveals that the term evolves from Greek and Latin components that mean, roughly, “to add to”. The word was originally employed in the 16th century in a grammatical context to indicate “the addition of a letter or syllable to the beginning of a word”, and was adopted to describe “the replacement of defective or absent parts of the body by artificial substitutes” in the 1700’s. More recently the world “prosthesis” has come to be used to indicate more simply, “an artificial replacement for a part of the body” (OED Online). As we see in the use of the term over the past few decades, the meaning of the word continues to shift and is now often used to describe technological additions that don’t necessarily replace parts of the body, but augment and extend embodied capabilities in various ways. Technology as prosthesis is “a trope that has flourished in a recent and varied literature concerned with interrogating human-technology interfaces” (Jain 32), and now goes far beyond signifying the replacement of missing components. Although the prosthesis has “become somewhat of an all-purpose metaphor for interactions of body and technology” (Sun 16) and “a tempting theoretical gadget” (Jain 49), I contend that this metaphor is not often used particularly faithfully. Instead of invoking anything akin to the complex lived corporeal experiences and conundrums of prosthetic users, what we often get when it comes to metaphors of technology-as-prostheses is a fascination with the potential of technologies in seamlessly extending our bodies. This necessitates a fantasy version of both the body and its prostheses as interchangeable or extendable appendages to be unproblematically plugged and unplugged, modifying our capabilities and perceptions to our varying whims.Of course, a body seamlessly and infinitely extended by technological prostheses is really no body. This model forgoes actual lived bodies for a shiny but hollow amalgamation based on what I have termed the “disembodimyth” enabled by technological transcendence. By imagining our bodies as assemblages of optional appendages, it is not far of a leap to imagine opting out of our bodies altogether and using technological means to unfasten our consciousness from our corporeal parts. Alison Muri points out that this myth of imminent emancipation from our bodies via unity with technology is a view that has become “increasingly prominent in popular media and cultural studies” (74), despite or perhaps because of the fact that, due to global overpopulation and wasteful human environmental practices, “the human body has never before been so present, or so materially manifest at any time in the history of humanity”, rendering “contradictory, if not absurd, the extravagantly metaphorical claims over the past two decades of the human body’s disappearance or obsolescence due to technology” (75-76). In other words, it becomes increasingly difficult to speak seriously about the body being erased or escaped via technological prosthetics when those prosthetics, and our bodies themselves, continue to proliferate and contribute to the piling up of waste and pollution in the current Anthropocene. But whether they imply smooth couplings with alluring technologies, or uncoupling from the body altogether, these technology-as-prosthesis metaphors tell us very little about “prosthetic realities” (Sun 24). Actual prosthetic realities involve learning curves; pain, frustrations and triumphs; hard-earned remappings of mental models; and much experimentation and adaption on the part of both technology and user in order to function. In this vein, Vivian Sobchak has detailed the complex sensations and phenomenological effects that followed the amputation of her leg high above the knee, including the shifting presence of her “phantom limb” perceptions, the alignments, irritations, movements, and stabilities offered by her prosthetic leg, and her shifting senses of bodily integrity and body-image over time. An oversimplistic application of the prosthetic metaphor for our encounters with technology runs the risk of forgetting this wealth of experiences and instructive first-hand accounts from people who have been using therapeutic prosthetics as long as assistive devices have been conceived of, built, and used. Of course, prosthetics have long been employed not simply to aid function and mobility, but also to restore and prop up concepts of what a “whole,” “normal” body looks like, moves like, and includes as essential components. Prosthetics are employed, in many cases, to allow the user to “pass” as able-bodied in rendering their own technological presence invisible, in service of restoring an ableist notion of embodied normality. Scholars of Critical Disability Studies have pushed back against these ableist notions, in service of recognising the capacities of “the disabled body when it is understood not as a less than perfect form of the normative standard, but as figuring difference in a nonbinary sense” (Shildrick 14). Paralympian, actress, and model Aimee Mullins has lent her voice to this cause, publicly contesting the prioritisation of realistic, unobtrusive form in prosthetic design. In a TED talk entitled It’s Not Fair Having 12 Pairs of Legs, she showcases her collection of prosthetics, including “cheetah legs” designed for optimal running speed, transparent glass-like legs, ornately carved wooden legs, Barbie doll-inspired legs customised with high heel shoes, and beautiful, impractical jellyfish legs. In illustrating the functional, fashionable, and fantastical possibilities, she challenges prosthetic designers to embrace more poetry and whimsy, while urging us all to move “away from the need to replicate human-ness as the only aesthetic ideal” (Mullins). In this same light, Sarah S. Jain asks “how do body-prosthesis relays transform individual bodies as well as entire social notions about what a properly functioning physical body might be?” (39). In her exploration of how prostheses can be simultaneously wounding and enabling, Jain recounts Sigmund Freud’s struggle with his own palate replacement following surgery for throat cancer in 1923. His prosthesis allowed him to regain the ability to speak and eat, but also caused him significant pain. Nevertheless, his artificial palate had to be worn, or the tissue would shrink and necessitate additional painful procedures (Jain 31). Despite this fraught experience, Freud himself espoused the trope of technologically enhanced transcendence, pronouncing “Man has, as it were, become a prosthetic god. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs, he is truly magnificent.” However, he did add a qualification, perhaps reflective of his own experiences, by next noting, “but those organs have not grown on him and they still give him much trouble at times” (qtd. in Jain 31). This trouble is, I argue, important to remember and reclaim. It is also no less present in our interactions with our media prostheses. Many of our technological encounters with media come with unacknowledged discomforts, adjustments, lag, strain, ill-fitting defaults, and fatigue. From carpal tunnel syndrome to virtual reality vertigo, our interactions with media technologies are often marked by pain and “much trouble” in Freud’s sense. Computer Science and Cultural Studies scholar Phoebe Sengers opens a short piece titled Technological Prostheses: An Anecdote, by reflecting on how “we have reached the post-physical era. On the Internet, all that matters is our thoughts. The body is obsolete. At least, whoever designed my computer interface thought so.” She traces how concentrated interactions with computers during her graduate work led to intense tendonitis in her hands. Her doctor responded by handing her “a technological prosthesis, two black leather wrist braces” that allowed her to return to her keyboard to resume typing ten hours a day. Shortly after her assisted return to her computer, she developed severe tendonitis in her elbows and had to stop typing altogether. Her advisor also handed her a technological prosthesis, this time “a speech understanding system that would transcribe my words,” so that she could continue to work. Two days later she lost her voice. Ultimately she “learned that my body does not go away when I work. I learned to stop when it hurt […] and to refuse to behave as though my body was not there” (Sengers). My own experiences in grad school were similar in many ways to Sengers’s. Besides the pasta problem outlined above, my own computer interfacing injuries at that point in my career meant I could no longer turn keys in doors, use a screwdriver, lift weights, or play the guitar. I held a friend’s baby at Christmas that year and the pressure of the small body on my arm make me wince. My family doctor bent my arm around a little, then shrugging her shoulders, she signed me up for a nerve test. As a young neurologist proceeded to administer a series of electric shocks and stick pins into my arms in various places, I noticed she had an arm brace herself. She explained that she also had a repetitive strain injury aggravated by her work tasks. She pronounced mine an advanced repetitive strain injury involving both medial and lateral epicondylitis, and sent me home with recommendations for rest, ice and physiotherapy. Rest was a challenge: Like Sengers, I puzzled over how one might manage to be productive in academia without typing. I tried out some physiotherapy, with my arm connected to electrodes and currents coursing through my elbow until my arm contorted in bizarre ways involuntarily. I tried switching my mouse from my right side to my left, switching from typing to voice recognition software and switching from a laptop to a more ergonomic desktop setup. I tried herbal topical treatments, wearing an extremely ugly arm brace, doing yoga poses, and enduring chiropractic bone-cracking. I learned in talking with people around me at that time that repetitive strains of various kinds are surprisingly common conditions for academics and other computer-oriented occupations. I learned other things well worth learning in that painful process. In terms of my own writing and thinking about technology, I have even less tolerance for the idea of ephemeral, transcendent technological fusions between human and machine. Seductive slippages into a cyberspatial existence seem less sexy when bumping your body up against the very physical and unforgiving interface hurts more with each keystroke or mouse click. The experience has given me a chronic injury to manage carefully ever since, rationing my typing time and redoubling my commitment to practicing embodied theorising about technology, with attention to sensation, materiality, and the way joints (between bones or between computer and computant) can become points of inflammation. Although pain is rarely referenced in the myths of smooth human and technological incorporations, there is much to be learned in acknowledging and exploring the entry and exit wounds made when we interface with technology. The elbow, or wrist, or lower back, or mental health that gives out serves as an effective alarm, should it be ignored too long. If nothing else, like a crashed computer, a point of pain will break a flow of events typically taken for granted. Whether it is your screen or your pinky finger that unexpectedly freezes, a system collapse will prompt a step back to look with new perspective at the process you were engaged in. The lag, crash, break, gap, crack, or blister exposes the inherent imperfections in a system and offers up an invitation for reflection, critical engagement, and careful choice.One careful choice we could make would be a more critical engagement with technology-as-prosthesis by “re-membering” our jointedness with technologies. Of course, joints themselves are not distinct parts, but interesting articulated systems and relationships in the spaces in-between. Experiencing our jointedness with technologies involves recognising that this is not the smooth romantic union with technology that has so often been exalted. Instead, our technological articulations involve a range of pleasures and pain, flows and blockages, frictions and slippages, flexibilities and rigidities. I suggest that a new model for understanding technology and embodiment might employ “articulata” as a central figure, informed by the multiple meanings of articulation. At their simplest, articulata are hinged, jointed, plural beings, but they are also precarious things that move beyond a hollow collection of corporeal parts. The inspiration for an exploration of articulation as a metaphor in this way was planted by the work of Donna Haraway, and especially by her 1992 essay, “The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others,” in which she touches briefly on articulation and its promise. Haraway suggests that “To articulate is to signify. It is to put things together, scary things, risky things, contingent things. I want to live in an articulate world. We articulate; therefore we are” (324). Following from Haraway’s work, this framework insists that bodies and technologies are not simply components cobbled together, but a set of relations that rework each other in complex and ongoing processes of articulation. The double-jointed meaning of articulation is particularly apt as inspiration for crafting a more nuanced understanding of embodiment, since articulation implies both physiology and communication. It is a term that can be used to explain physical jointedness and mobility, but also expressive specificities. We articulate a joint by exploring its range of motion and we articulate ideas by expressing them in words. In both senses we articulate and are articulated by our jointed nature. Instead of oversimplifying or idealising embodied relationships with prostheses and other technologies, we might conceive of them and experience them as part of a “joint project”, based on points of connexion that are not static, but dynamic, expressive, complex, contested, and sometimes uncomfortable. After all, as Shildrick reminds us, in addition to functioning as utilitarian material artifacts, “prostheses are rich in semiotic meaning and mark the site where the disordering ambiguity, and potential transgressions, of the interplay between the human, animal and machine cannot be occluded” (17). By encouraging the attentive embracing of these multiple meanings, disorderings, ambiguities, transgressions and interplays, my aim moving forward is to explore the ways in which we might all become more articulate about our articulations. After all, I too want to live in an articulate world.ReferencesAT&amp;T. "AT&amp;T Reach Out and Touch Someone Commercial – 1987." 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Body &amp; Society 9.3 (2003): 73–92.Nikon. "See Much Further! Nikon COOLPIX P1000." Advertisement. 1 Nov. 2018. YouTube. &lt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtABWZX0U8w&gt;.OED Online. "prosthesis, n." Oxford UP. June 2019. 1 Aug. 2019 &lt;https://www-oed-com.proxy.hil.unb.ca/view/Entry/153069?redirectedFrom=prosthesis#eid&gt;.Sengers, Phoebe. "Technological Prostheses: An Anecdote." ZKP-4 Net Criticism Reader. Eds. Geert Lovink and Pit Schultz. 1997.Shildrick, Margrit. "Why Should Our Bodies End at the Skin?: Embodiment, Boundaries, and Somatechnics." Hypatia 30.1 (2015): 13–29.Sobchak, Vivian. "Living a ‘Phantom Limb’: On the Phenomenology of Bodily Integrity." Body &amp; Society 16.3 (2010): 51–67.Stone, Allucquere Roseanne. "Will the Real Body Please Stand Up? Boundary Stories about Virtual Cultures." Cyberspace: First Steps. Ed. Michael Benedikt. Cambridge: MIT P, 1991. 81–113.Sun, Hsiao-yu. "Prosthetic Configurations and Imagination: Dis/ability, Body and Technology." Concentric: Literacy and Cultural Studies 44.1 (2018): 13–39.Texas Instruments. "We Wrote the Book on Classroom Calculators." Advertisement. Teaching Children Mathematics 2.1 (1995): Back Matter. &lt;http://www.jstor.org/stable/41196414&gt;.

Image 1: Hasbro/Tiger Electronics 1998 Furby. (Photo credit: Author) Introduction Since the mid-1990s robotic and digital creatures designed to offer social interaction and companionship have been developed for commercial and research interests. Integral to encouraging positive experiences with these creatures has been the use of cute aesthetics that aim to endear companions to their human users. During this time there has also been a growth in online communities that engage in cultural production through fan fiction responses to existing cultural artefacts, including the widely recognised electronic companion, Hasbro’s Furby (image 1). These user stories and Furby’s online representation in general, demonstrate that contrary to the intentions of their designers and marketers, Furbys are not necessarily received as cute, or the embodiment of the helpless and harmless demeanour that goes along with it. Furbys’ large, lash-framed eyes, small, or non-existent limbs, and baby voice are typical markers of cuteness but can also evoke another side of cuteness—monstrosity, especially when the creature appears physically capable instead of helpless (Brzozowska-Brywczynska 217). Furbys are a particularly interesting manifestation of the cute aesthetic because it is used as tool for encouraging attachment to a socially interactive electronic object, and therefore intersects with existing ideas about technology and nonhuman companions, both of which often embody a sense of otherness. This paper will explore how cuteness intersects withand transitions into monstrosity through online representations of Furbys, troubling their existing design and marketing narrative by connecting and likening them to other creatures, myths, and anecdotes. Analysis of narrative in particular highlights the instability of cuteness, and cultural understandings of existing cute characters, such as the gremlins from the film Gremlins (Dante) reinforce the idea that cuteness should be treated with suspicion as it potentially masks a troubling undertone. Ultimately, this paper aims to interrogate the cultural complexities of designing electronic creatures through the stories that people tell about them online. Fan Production Authors of fan fiction are known to creatively express their responses to a variety of media by appropriating the characters, settings, and themes of an original work and sharing their cultural activity with others (Jenkins 88). On a personal level, Jenkins (103) argues that “[i]n embracing popular texts, the fans claim those works as their own, remaking them in their own image, forcing them to respond to their needs and to gratify their desires.” Fan fiction authors are motivated to write not for financial or professional gains but for personal enjoyment and fan recognition, however, their production does not necessarily come from favourable opinions of an existing text. The antifan is an individual who actively hates a text or cultural artefact and is mobilised in their dislike to contribute to a community of others who share their views (Gray 841). Gray suggests that both fan and antifan activity contribute to our understanding of the kinds of stories audiences want: Although fans may wish to bring a text into everyday life due to what they believe it represents, antifans fear or do not want what they believe it represents and so, as with fans, antifan practice is as important an indicator of interactions between the textual and public spheres. (855) Gray reminds that fans, nonfans, and antifans employ different interpretive strategies when interacting with a text. In particular, while fans intimate knowledge of a text reflects their overall appreciation, antifans more often focus on the “dimensions of the moral, the rational-realistic, [or] the aesthetic” (856) that they find most disagreeable. Additionally, antifans may not experience a text directly, but dislike what knowledge they do have of it from afar. As later examples will show, the treatment of Furbys in fan fiction arguably reflects an antifan perspective through a sense of distrust and aversion, and analysing it can provide insight into why interactions with, or indirect knowledge of, Furbys might inspire these reactions. Derecho argues that in part because of the potential copyright violation that is faced by most fandoms, “even the most socially conventional fan fiction is an act of defiance of corporate control…” (72). Additionally, because of the creative freedom it affords, “fan fiction and archontic literature open up possibilities – not just for opposition to institutions and social systems, but also for a different perspective on the institutional and the social” (76). Because of this criticality, and its subversive nature, fan fiction provides an interesting consumer perspective on objects that are designed and marketed to be received in particular ways. Further, because much of fan fiction draws on fictional content, stories about objects like Furby are not necessarily bound to reality and incorporate fantastical, speculative, and folkloric readings, providing diverse viewpoints of the object. Finally, if, as robotics commentators (cf. Levy; Breazeal) suggest, companionable robots and technologies are going to become increasingly present in everyday life, it is crucial to understand not only how they are received, but also where they fit within a wider cultural sphere. Furbys can be seen as a widespread, if technologically simple, example of these technologies and are often treated as a sign of things to come (Wilks 12). The Design of Electronic Companions To compete with the burgeoning market of digital and electronic pets, in 1998 Tiger Electronics released the Furby, a fur-covered, robotic creature that required the user to carry out certain nurturance duties. Furbys expected feeding and entertaining and could become sick and scared if neglected. Through a program that advanced slowly over time regardless of external stimulus, Furbys appeared to evolve from speaking entirely Furbish, their mother tongue, to speaking English. To the user, it appeared as though their interactions with the object were directly affecting its progress and maturation because their care duties of feeding and entertaining were happening parallel to the Furbish to English transition (Turkle, Breazeal, Daste, &amp; Scassellati 314). The design of electronic companions like Furby is carefully considered to encourage positive emotional responses. For example, Breazeal (2002 230) argues that a robot will be treated like a baby, and nurtured, if it has a large head, big eyes, and pursed lips. Kinsella’s (1995) also emphasises cute things need for care as they are “soft, infantile, mammalian, round, without bodily appendages (e.g. arms), without bodily orifices (e.g. mouths), non-sexual, mute, insecure, helpless or bewildered” (226). From this perspective, Furbys’ physical design plays a role in encouraging nurturance. Such design decisions are reinforced by marketing strategies that encourage Furbys to be viewed in a particular way. As a marketing tool, Harris (1992) argues that: cuteness has become essential in the marketplace in that advertisers have learned that consumers will “adopt” products that create, often in their packaging alone, an aura of motherlessness, ostracism, and melancholy, the silent desperation of the lost puppy dog clamoring to be befriended - namely, to be bought. (179) Positioning Furbys as friendly was also important to encouraging a positive bond with a caregiver. The history, or back story, that Furbys were given in the instruction manual was designed to convey their kind, non-threatening nature. Although alive and unpredictable, it was crucial that Furbys were not frightening. As imaginary living creatures, the origin of Furbys required explaining: “some had suggested positioning Furby as an alien, but that seemed too foreign and frightening for little girls. By May, the thinking was that Furbies live in the clouds – more angelic, less threatening” (Kirsner). In creating this story, Furby’s producers both endeared the object to consumers by making it seem friendly and inquisitive, and avoided associations to its mass-produced, factory origins. Monstrous and Cute Furbys Across fan fiction, academic texts, and media coverage there is a tendency to describe what Furbys look like by stringing together several animals and objects. Furbys have been referred to as a “mechanized ball of synthetic hair that is part penguin, part owl and part kitten” (Steinberg), a “cross between a hamster and a bird…” (Lawson &amp; Chesney 34), and “ “owl-like in appearance, with large bat-like ears and two large white eyes with small, reddish-pink pupils” (ChaosInsanity), to highlight only a few. The ambiguous appearance of electronic companions is often a strategic decision made by the designer to avoid biases towards specific animals or forms, making the companion easier to accept as “real” or “alive” (Shibata 1753). Furbys are arguably evidence of this strategy and appear to be deliberately unfamiliar. However, the assemblage, and exaggeration, of parts that describes Furbys also conjures much older associations: the world of monsters in gothic literature. Notice the similarities between the above attempts to describe what Furbys looks like, and a historical description of monsters: early monsters are frequently constructed out of ill-assorted parts, like the griffin, with the head and wings of an eagle combined with the body and paws of a lion. Alternatively, they are incomplete, lacking essential parts, or, like the mythological hydra with its many heads, grotesquely excessive. (Punter &amp; Byron 263) Cohen (6) argues that, metaphorically, because of their strange visual assembly, monsters are displaced beings “whose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to include them in any systematic structuration. And so the monster is dangerous, a form suspended between forms that threatens to smash distinctions.” Therefore, to call something a monster is also to call it confusing and unfamiliar. Notice in the following fan fiction example how comparing Furby to an owl makes it strange, and there seems to be uncertainty around what Furbys are, and where they fit in the natural order: The first thing Heero noticed was that a 'Furby' appeared to be a childes toy, shaped to resemble a mutated owl. With fur instead of feathers, no wings, two large ears and comical cat paws set at the bottom of its pudding like form. Its face was devoid of fuzz with a yellow plastic beak and too large eyes that gave it the appearance of it being addicted to speed [sic]. (Kontradiction) Here is a character unfamiliar with Furbys, describing its appearance by relating it to animal parts. Whether Furbys are cute or monstrous is contentious, particularly in fan fictions where they have been given additional capabilities like working limbs and extra appendages that make them less helpless. Furbys’ lack, or diminution of parts, and exaggeration of others, fits the description of cuteness, as well as their sole reliance on caregivers to be fed, entertained, and transported. If viewed as animals, Furbys appear physically limited. Kinsella (1995) finds that a sense of disability is important to the cute aesthetic: stubby arms, no fingers, no mouths, huge heads, massive eyes – which can hide no private thoughts from the viewer – nothing between their legs, pot bellies, swollen legs or pigeon feet – if they have feet at all. Cute things can’t walk, can’t talk, can’t in fact do anything at all for themselves because they are physically handicapped. (236) Exploring the line between cute and monstrous, Brzozowska-Brywczynska argues that it is this sense of physical disability that distinguishes the two similar aesthetics. “It is the disempowering feeling of pity and sympathy […] that deprives a monster of his monstrosity” (218). The descriptions of Furbys in fan fiction suggest that they transition between the two, contingent on how they are received by certain characters, and the abilities they are given by the author. In some cases it is the overwhelming threat the Furby poses that extinguishes feelings of care. In the following two excerpts that the revealing of threatening behaviour shifts the perception of Furby from cute to monstrous in ‘When Furbies Attack’ (Kellyofthemidnightdawn): “These guys are so cute,” she moved the Furby so that it was within inches of Elliot's face and positioned it so that what were apparently the Furby's lips came into contact with his cheek “See,” she smiled widely “He likes you.” […] Olivia's breath caught in her throat as she found herself backing up towards the door. She kept her eyes on the little yellow monster in front of her as her hand slowly reached for the door knob. This was just too freaky, she wanted away from this thing. The Furby that was originally called cute becomes a monster when it violently threatens the protagonist, Olivia. The shifting of Furbys between cute and monstrous is a topic of argument in ‘InuYasha vs the Demon Furbie’ (Lioness of Dreams). The character Kagome attempts to explain a Furby to Inuyasha, who views the object as a demon: That is a toy called a Furbie. It's a thing we humans call “CUTE”. See, it talks and says cute things and we give it hugs! (Lioness of Dreams) A recurrent theme in the Inuyasha (Takahashi) anime is the generational divide between Kagome and Inuyasha. Set in feudal-era Japan, Kagome is transported there from modern-day Tokyo after falling into a well. The above line of dialogue reinforces the relative newness, and cultural specificity, of cute aesthetics, which according to Kinsella (1995 220) became increasingly popular throughout the 1980s and 90s. In Inuyasha’s world, where demons and monsters are a fixture of everyday life, the Furby appearance shifts from cute to monstrous. Furbys as GremlinsDuring the height of the original 1998 Furby’s public exposure and popularity, several news articles referred to Furby as “the five-inch gremlin” (Steinberg) and “a furry, gremlin-looking creature” (Del Vecchio 88). More recently, in a review of the 2012 Furby release, one commenter exclaimed: “These things actually look scary! Like blue gremlins!” (KillaRizzay). Following the release of the original Furbys, Hasbro collaborated with the film’s merchandising team to release Interactive ‘Gizmo’ Furbys (image 2). Image 2: Hasbro 1999 Interactive Gizmo (photo credit: Author) Furbys’ likeness to gremlins offers another perspective on the tension between cute and monstrous aesthetics that is contingent on the creature’s behaviour. The connection between Furbys and gremlins embodies a sense of mistrust, because the film Gremlins focuses on the monsters that dwell within the seemingly harmless and endearing mogwai/gremlin creatures. Catastrophic events unfold after they are cared for improperly. Gremlins, and by association Furbys, may appear cute or harmless, but this story tells that there is something darker beneath the surface. The creatures in Gremlins are introduced as mogwai, and in Chinese folklore the mogwai or mogui is a demon (Zhang, 1999). The pop culture gremlin embodied in the film, then, is cute and demonic, depending on how it is treated. Like a gremlin, a Furby’s personality is supposed to be a reflection of the care it receives. Transformation is a common theme of Gremlins and also Furby, where it is central to the sense of “aliveness” the product works to create. Furbys become “wiser” as time goes on, transitioning through “life stages” as they “learn” about their surroundings. As we learn from their origin story, Furbys jumped from their home in the clouds in order to see and explore the world firsthand (Tiger Electronics 2). Because Furbys are susceptible to their environment, they come with rules on how they must be cared for, and the consequences if this is ignored. Without attention and “food”, a Furby will become unresponsive and even ill: “If you allow me to get sick, soon I will not want to play and will not respond to anything but feeding” (Tiger Electronics 6). In Gremlins, improper care manifests in an abrupt transition from cute to monstrous: Gizmo’s strokeable fur is transformed into a wet, scaly integument, while the vacant portholes of its eyes (the most important facial feature of the cute thing, giving us free access to its soul and ensuring its total structability, its incapacity to hold back anything in reserve) become diabolical slits hiding a lurking intelligence, just as its dainty paws metamorphose into talons and its pretty puckered lips into enormous Cheshire grimaces with full sets of sharp incisors. (Harris 185–186) In the Naruto (Kishimoto) fan fiction ‘Orochimaru's World Famous New Year's Eve Party’ (dead drifter), while there is no explicit mention of Gremlins, the Furby undergoes the physical transformation that appears in the films. The Furby, named Sasuke, presumably after the Naruto antagonist Sasuke, and hinting at its untrustworthy nature, undergoes a transformation that mimics that of Gremlins: when water is poured on the Furby, boils appear and fall from its back, each growing into another Furby. Also, after feeding the Furby, it lays eggs: Apparently, it's not a good idea to feed Furbies chips. Why? Because they make weird cocoon eggs and transform into… something. (ch. 5) This sequence of events follows the Gremlins movie structure, in which cute and furry Gizmo, after being exposed to water and fed after midnight, “begins to reproduce, laying eggs that enter a larval stage in repulsive cocoons covered in viscous membranes” (Harris 185). Harris also reminds that the appearance of gremlins comes with understandings of how they should be treated: Whereas cute things have clean, sensuous surfaces that remain intact and unpenetrated […] the anti-cute Gremlins are constantly being squished and disembowelled, their entrails spilling out into the open, as they explode in microwaves and run through paper shredders and blenders. (Harris 186) The Furbys in ‘Orochimaru's World Famous New Year's Eve Party’ meet a similar end: Kuro Furby whined as his brain was smashed in. One of its eyes popped out and rolled across the floor. (dead drifter ch. 6) A horde of mischievous Furbys are violently dispatched, including the original Furby that was lovingly cared for. Conclusion This paper has explored examples from online culture in which different cultural references clash and merge to explore artefacts such as Furby, and the complexities of design, such as the use of ambiguously mammalian, and cute, aesthetics in an effort to encourage positive attachment. Fan fiction, as a subversive practice, offers valuable critiques of Furby that are imaginative and speculative, providing creative responses to experiences with Furbys, but also opening up potential for what electronic companions could become. In particular, the use of narrative demonstrates that cuteness is an unstable aesthetic that is culturally contingent and very much tied to behaviour. As above examples demonstrate, Furbys can move between cute, friendly, helpless, threatening, monstrous, and strange in one story. Cute Furbys became monstrous when they were described as an assemblage of disparate parts, made physically capable and aggressive, and affected by their environment or external stimulus. Cultural associations, such as gremlins, also influence how an electronic animal is received and treated, often troubling the visions of designers and marketers who seek to present friendly, nonthreatening, and accommodating companions. These diverse readings are valuable in understanding how companionable technologies are received, especially if they continue to be developed and made commercially available, and if cuteness is to be used as means of encouraging positive attachment. References Breazeal, Cynthia. Designing Sociable Robots. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002. Brzozowska-Brywczynska, Maja. "Monstrous/Cute: Notes on the Ambivalent Nature of Cuteness." Monsters and the Monstrous: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil. Ed. Niall Scott. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi. 2007. 213 - 28. 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