4. TECHNOPOLITICS IN THE ARCHIVE: SOVEREIGNTY,RESEARCH, AND EVERYDAY LIFE

This article explores the place of the archive in the context of land claims research. This essay develops a critical approach to identity technopolitics with the aim of helping historians working with indigenous communities to ask new kinds of questions about the relationships and subject positions opened up by archivization and the myriad other technologies of land claims research. Since researchers first began preparing for the Canadian case, Delgamuukw’ and Gisday'wa v. The Queen, four decades ago, the immense stores of documentary evidence generated for the trial have given ground to numerous new claims and conflicts. Tracing the experiences of one prominent Gitxsan historical researcher who has leveraged his own archive and expertise to build genealogies for hundreds of individuals, I explore the intimate disappointments and impossible obligations that indigenous historians must mediate.     

THE TEXTS FORMERLY OWNED BY ST. PAUL PUBLIC LIBRARY AND PUBLISHED IN SET

In 1961 T. B. Jones and J. W. Snyder published 332 texts from many collections in the United States in their book Sumerian Economic Texts from the Third Ur Dynasty, a Catalogue and Discussion of Documents from Various Collections (Minneapolis) (usually     

RELIABILITY AND REPEATABILITY IN DENDROCHRONOLOGICAL ANALYSIS: TESTS USING THE FLETCHER ARCHIVE OF PANEL-PAINTING DATA

Research into the dates of timber used for art-historical objects has provided a large data set on which to test standard dendrochronological techniques. Some 177 sets of tree-ring measurements, originally analysed by the late Dr J. M. Fletcher at Oxford University, have been re-examined independently in the tree-ring laboratories at the University of Sheffield and the Museum of London Archaeology Service. The results show a high level of agreement between the laboratories. In contrast, many of the dates produced by Dr Fletcher for the paintings are not confirmed. The two different approaches described here also resulted in remarkably similar internal groupings of the dated material. These groupings probably reflect the provenance of the timbers and suggest that two different areas of the eastern Baltic supplied the bulk of the material with smaller quantities of panels originating in Britain and central Europe.     

THE MISSISSAUGA TRAIN DERAILMENT AND EVACUATION, 10–16 NOVEMBER 1979

The evacuation of a quarter of a million residents of the city of Mississauga, Ontario, in the aftermath of the derailment of a freight train carrying hazardous materials on 10 November 1979, was, at that time, the largest peacetime evacuation ever conducted in North America. It took place with little panic or injury, no deaths, and no apparent resistance to evacuation advice. Not surprisingly, then, the success of the Mississauga evacuation has attracted the interest, and raised the hopes, of emergency planners, governments, and industry officials in North America and many other countries. These groups want to understand the reasons for the success of the evacuation, and, if possible, to transfer the effective elements of the Mississauga emergency plans and response procedures to their own jurisdictions. Their concerns reflect the wider search for a model of public decision-making under threat which would identify and link cirtical factors, decisions, and behaviour, and which would provide a framework for emergency planning and research.     

ACADEMICIAN N. I. VAVILOV AND THE GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF THE USSR

Academician N. I. Vavilov (1887-1943) served as president of the Geographical Society of the USSR from 1931 to 1940. A distinguished plant breeder, geneticist, explorer for wild ancestors of cultivated plants, and geographer, he traveled widely and reported regularly to the Society on his explorations and discoveries. Together with Yu. N. Shokal'skiy, then the honorary president, he brought many new initiatives to the activities of the Society. They arranged for the transfer of the Society from the People's Comissariat of Education of the RSFSR to the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. The First All-Union Congress of Geographers of the USSR was held in 1933, participation in international congresses was arranged, international co-operation was sponsored, membership was increased sharply, sections and commissions were established or revived, a series of public lectures was organized, a lecture hall was opened, and the scientific archives were enriched. Vavilov was especially interested in the work of the Section on History of Geographical Knowledge and participated actively in special issues of Izvestiya of the Society and in commemorative meetings at the Society devoted to individual geographers who had made particularly significant contributions to geographical knowledge (translated by Chauncy D. Harris, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637-1583).