Challenges and Controversies in the Protection of Archaeological Resources

Abstract

I think the following paper by S. Alan Skinner is important in two ways. First, it shows how, in the United States, if an archeological contractor wishes to take issue with an agency's procurement policies, he or she can use standard federal government protestation procedures to do so. Most of us are unfamiliar with these procedures, and Skinner's paper provides a valuable primer for those who may have to use them in the future. Second, I. think Skinner's paper is important for its demonstration of a distinction between procurement problems that can be effectively addressed through case-by-case protestation and those that cannot. Note that in Skinner's case, the Comptroller General did not comment on the archeologists' concern about curation capabilities and, perhaps even more significantly, did not deal with the agency's policy of awarding contracts based largely on cost, without solicitation or evaluation of research proposals. I doubt if the Comptroller's failure to fully consider these matters resulted from any deficiency in the case presented by Skinner and his colleagues. These issues are never likely to be considered by the Comptroller, I believe, because they are professional in nature, and it is not the Comptroller's business to settle professional disputes.

All this is not to suggest that archeologists should not challenge agencies that fail to ensure proper curation or that select archeological contractors primarily on the basis of bid. Such policies should be challenged at all possible levels, and the fact that our challenges are not always (or even often) effective will not detract from the documentary record of professional objection that will thus be constructed. Such a documentary record will be vital if really effective action—probably through the Congress—is ever to take place.

What I do suggest is that, by documenting the failure of the Comptroller General to reach the issues of broadest importance to archeologists in his case, Skinner has outlined a challenge to the authorities responsible for managing the federal historic preservation system. The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation and the Secretary of the Interior are explicitly charged with consultation with other federal agencies to ensure that their policies effectively contribute to the preservation of historic places and archeological data. Contracting policies that result in low-quality research or impermanent preservation of data and collections are legitimate targets for the historic preservation authorities, and should be vigorously attacked. Actions like the one taken by Skinner and his colleagues will help the federal authorities to launch and sustain such an attack.     

Cultural franchising,imperialism and globalisation: What's new?

Abstract

The late 1997 opening of Frank Gehry's spectacular new Guggenheim in Bilbao has been widely promoted as the international museum event of the decade. In the context of other developments, it has also been seen as evidence of Guggenheim director Thomas Krens's ‘tireless efforts to build the world's first global museum brand’. In post‐colonial countries such as Australia we know that museums have often been inextricably involved in imperial and international as well as national cultural power struggles. In this paper the ‘global brand’ view of the Guggenheim is further examined in an attempt to clarify whether this is just more of the same, (old wine in a new bottle) or whether museums are entering a new era of globalisation—and if so what may be some of the consequences for professional museum practice.     

A Strategy for Industrial Archaeology in the Black Country

Abstract

Remains from Britain's industrial past are being lost daily. Much has gone already, often with its importance unrecognised. This applies no more so than in the Black Country where a joint local authority/university initiative set about addressing the problem by identifying, through Local Area Surveys, significant remains from the industrial period. Arising from this, Dudley MBC's 'Strategy for Industrial Archaeology' now allows important sites to be flagged throughout the planning and development process and, with public involvement and the imaginative use of existing controls, a degree of protection is afforded. It is hoped that the approach described below will form the basis of discussion and encourage similar initiatives elsewhere.     

More than Meets the Eyes?: Archaeology Under Water,Technology, and Interpretation

Abstract

Archaeology has had a long and interesting relationship with technology. Technology has arguably allowed us to move from antiquarian interest to the robust academic institution that we now are. The importance that technology plays within archaeology is perhaps best exemplified within the increasingly popular/populist 'sub-discipline' of underwater archaeology. After all, contemporary underwater archaeology could not exist if it was not for the invention SCUBA. Alongside the 'day-to-day' use of technology there is also a rush to latch on contemporary technologies within the sub-discipline. The reasons for this are examined within this work, however, what is argued to be more important is the implications this has had on our discipline.

This paper examines these implications on and as part of underwater archaeology. The impact of its use on interpretive thinking within the sub-discipline are analyzed by assessing the very nature of theoretical thinking within our work. This paper raises the difficult and perhaps controversial question — are underwater archaeologists merely substituting technology for theory and as such offering, admittedly impressive, complex and sound scientific computer models as interpretation, rather than the data that they really are?     

Albert Wendt and the Problem of History

Poet and fiction writer Albert Wendt has taken on the task of correcting colonialist representations of the Pacific from an insider perspective. This involves him in questions of historical record and modes of recording history. The role of memory becomes central to the artist transposing oral traditions into written forms. Trained as an historian, Wendt progressively blurs the boundaries between imaginative and factual, personal and public re/constructions, aware of the illusions of both nationalistic nostalgia for lost perfection and colonialist 'objective' encyclopaedism. History both liberates and traps; in the poem 'Inside Us the Dead' and novels Pouliuli and Black Rainbow , Wendt looks for a postcolonial dynamic between postmodern deconstruction and representational texts that can be seen in terms of de Certeau's ideas of tactics and strategies.     

WORKING ON THE RAILWAY: THE RISEHILL TUNNEL NAVVY CAMP,CUMBRIA

Abstract

An archaeological evaluation was undertaken by Channel 4's Time Team at the site of a navvy camp associated with the construction of Risehill Tunnel (also called Black Moss) on the Settle to Carlisle railway line, near Garsdale in Cumbria. The evaluation, comprising eight trenches, LiDAR and geophysical survey, highlighted the generally good preservation of the site, although many of the buildings appear to have been of timber with only rough stone foundations. Specialisation and division of different parts of the site between settlement and working areas was also seen. Contemporary documentary evidence has assisted with the interpretation of the archaeological remains, and revealed the extreme conditions which the workers and their families endured.     

Preservation in Industrial Archaeology

Abstract

Much of the recent interest in Industrial Archaeology has grown out of the preservation movement: the standing of the subject, in the eyes of the world, is particularly influenced by our choices for preservation and the methods of presentation which we employ. It therefore behoves us to ensure a proper theoretical basis for industrial preservation. This paper offers some suggestions for much needed guidelines concerning the rational selection and treatment of those industrial remains which ought to be preserved. The question of 'total environment preservation' is also considered.     

'It's only as stupid as you are': Children's and adults' negotiation of ICT competence at home and at school

Contemporary discourses about children's use of information and communication technologies (ICT)—which both celebrate children's command of a technology which is seen to be our future, and raise fears that this technology is putting children's emotional well-being at risk—are problematic, resting as they do on essentialist ideas about children, and overt technological determinism. Drawing instead on work within the new social studies of childhood, and the sociology of science and technology, we identify a need for research which examines how children and technology come together in diverse communities of practice. The communities of practice we study are the home- and school-based ICT usage of British school children in the late 1990s. Our research identifies the different ways in which children and adults negotiate children's technical and emotional competence in relation to ICT, and uncovers the varied meanings of childhood and technology which emerge for adults and children in these two socio-spatial environments. These findings not only highlight the spatiality of children's and adults' performances and understandings of ICT competence, but also how these are constituted through the socio-spatial relations which shape the off-line spaces of home and school.     

Social Science and the Discovery of a 'Post-Protestant People': Rowntree's Surveys of York and their other Legacy

Abstract

Despite the bitter criticism it evoked, both from clerical professionals and lay experts on its publication in 1951, Rowntree's and Lavers's English Life and Leisure survived to become an enduring classic of modern British social science. Yet, in many ways, the respectability it eventually achieved now masks the true radicalism of its findings. Building on fifty years of his own social survey work in York, Rowntree (and his collaborator) were able to show the full extent of the decline of church organization, affiliation and attendance in twentieth-century Britain. They also demonstrated just how these processes had particularly affected the Protestant community — most notably the Nonconformist Protestant community — in England. Finally, they went on to demonstrate how that — institutional — decline was increasingly related to changes in, and a diminution of, specifically Christian beliefs amongst the population as a whole. Their results anticipated many of the conclusions of the 'pessimistic' sociologists of religion in the 1960s. They also constitute a profound critique of 'optimistic' historical revisionism in more recent years. As such, they are perhaps more relevant than ever.     

President Obama,the Bible,and Political Rhetoric

Abstract

How has President Obama made use of the Bible in his political rhetoric, especially as it relates to public policy debates? This article addresses Obama's religious origins, his work as a community organizer in Chicago, his coming to Christian faith under the leadership of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and the development of his understanding regarding the relationship between faith and politics. In particular President Obama has emphasized the notion that we are all our brothers' and sisters' keepers. He also stresses the present generation of black Americans as "the Joshua Generation." The article considers President Obama's hermeneutics, as well as the important context of the black church for his own use of Scripture. The lenses of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Reinhold Niebuhr are also addressed as they relate to Obama's use of Scripture in political rhetoric.     

Much Ado About Dugald: The Chequered Career of Dugald Stewart's Letter to Sir William Forbes on James Beattie's Essay on Truth

Summary

Although Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo's An Account of the Life and Writings of James Beattie has long served as an invaluable resource for those interested in Beattie's life and thought, there has been little scholarship on the genesis of Forbes's book. This article considers the role played by Dugald Stewart—as well as that of his friend, Archibald Alison—in the making of Forbes's Life of Beattie. It also examines the reasons for Forbes's decision not to print Stewart's letter in its entirety in the Life of Beattie and explores the letter's significance for understanding Stewart's philosophical development.     

Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer and George Finlay

Abstract

The collection of Finlay Papers in the British School at Athens though throwing invaluable light on the character of George Finlay and on conditions in the Greece and western Europe of his day, are by no means complete in their coverage. The diaries cover only certain years; the Letter Book records mainly family and business correspondence; the actual copies of surviving letters both to and from Finlay—apart from Finlay to Leake or Leicester Warren—seem to owe their preservation to chance rather than policy. Yet Finlay was no less interested in the history of Trebizond than in Greek topography or in numismatics, and a stray survival among his papers seems to indicate that he had closer relations with Fallmerayer than is suggested by the almost total omission of any reference to him in the works on the Fragmentist (as Fallmerayer called himself). The editor of Fallmerayer's collected works, his best friend G. M. Thomas (the ‘carissimus Thomas’ of the Tagebücher), does mention the generosity of Fallmerayer's attitude towards Finlay's work on Trebizond, but that is about all.     

Conservation projects in Pergamon. Building Z and the shelter constructed above it

Abstract

The reconstruction and conservation of buildings in Pergamon has been an important aim of the excavations of the German Archaeological Institute Istanbul over the last twenty years. The paper discusses the structure known as Building Z situated about halfway up the slope to the acropolis of Pergamon on a rise between the terrace of the Sanctuary of Demeter and the precinct of the Temple of Hera. Although the southern fringes of this Hellenistic building were discovered in 1909, digging here was soon abandoned due to the very poor preservation of the walls. In 1990, a trench of the 'City Excavations' revealed the northern part of the building. The well-preserved Roman mosaic pavements and other remains found here — eventually exposing the best preserved examples of interior decoration yet discovered in the ancient city of Pergamon — prompted the construction of a shelter open to visitors. The construction of this shelter began in 1996 and was completed in 2004. The roofed area covers only the northern part of the former ancient building. The modern roof construction, on steel-trussed girders above the walls, has been deliberately designed as an independent unit.     

Marriage and the Law: Politics and Theology in Measure for Measure

Abstract

In Measure for Measure, Shakespeare portrays a clearly political problem: a city whose citizens are so unable to govern themselves that only the most severe legal punishments appear capable of restoring civic order. Yet the play's conclusion, for all its dramatic fireworks, does not obviously resolve this problem. All that happens, it appears, is that everyone gets married. Understanding marriage's political significance, therefore, is key to unraveling the play's political teaching. By carefully framing marriage within Pauline language of sin and grace—and in particular by using the image of death and rebirth through baptism—Shakespeare offers a theological as well as a political image of a kind of self-government capable of easing the city's legal dilemmas and reconciling justice with mercy.     

Rethinking Land Struggle in the Postindustrial City

The racial and cultural politics of land and property are central to urban struggle, but have received relatively little attention in geography. This paper analyzes land struggles in Detroit where over 100,000 parcels of land are classified as “vacant”. Since 2010, planners and government officials have been developing controversial plans to ruralize Detroit's “vacant” neighborhoods as part of a program of fiscal austerity, reigniting old questions of racialized dispossession, sovereignty, and struggles for liberation. This paper analyzes these contentious politics by examining disputes over a white businessman's proposal to build the world's largest urban forest in the center of a Black majority city. I focus on how residents, urban farmers, and community activists resisted the project by making counterclaims to vacant land as an urban commons. They argued that the land is inhabited not empty and that it belonged to those who labored upon and suffered for it. Combining community‐based ethnography with insights from critical property theory, critical race studies, and postcolonial theory, I argue that land struggles in Detroit are more than distributional conflicts over resources. They are inextricable from debates over notions of race, property, and citizenship that undergird modern liberal democracies and ongoing struggles for decolonization.     

Living with Heritage: The Potentials of and Pressures on the Heritage Landscape of Gwollu,Upper West Region,Ghana

Abstract

The impact of development has been identified as one of the most pressing concerns in heritage management in Africa. At the same time, heritage has also been recognized as having the potential to bring tourists, and thus growth, to local economies. Communities that wish to benefit from the latter have to balance developmental pressures against the preservation of heritage, and various sectors of the community may view these priorities differently. In this paper, I discuss some of the potentials of, and pressures on, the heritage landscape of Gwollu, a town in Ghana's Upper West Region. I use Gwollu's brickmakers as a case study to illustrate the small-scale everyday development that can have a lasting impact on a town's heritage resources, and how internal divisions within communities may affect the heritage tourism process.     

Socionatures,Space, and Decolonisation: Amílcar Cabral's Praxis of Dialectics

The agronomic writings of influential theorist and independence leader Amílcar Cabral contain a hitherto underappreciated dialectical approach that is environmental, nonreductive, spatialised, nonteleological, and anticolonial, with significance for geographies that are simultaneously critical, physical, Southern, Black, African, and decolonial. Cabral's interests in socionatures—and especially colonialism and the state—emerged from childhood in colonial Cabo Verde. His undergraduate thesis examines dialectics of soil erosion and agrarian structures in Portugal, amidst his politicisation and anti-colonial networking. He developed his dialectical approach spatially as he conducted Guinea-Bissau's agricultural census and advanced beyond methodological nationalism and evolutionary stagism by emphasising colonial connections (colonial state mechanisation and export crops in African agrarian systems). These insights and concerns shaped and were shaped by his work on warehouses, Angolan plantations, and broader post-1960 liberation struggles to suggest that a rural guerrilla strategy was possible and necessary in Guinea through dialectical engagements with diverse peasantries and international support.     

Shining a Light on Dark Tourism: German Bunkers in the British Channel Islands

Abstract

Lying at the heart of Tonbridge and Ashworth's 'dissonant heritage' are issues of disinheritance and the subsequent discord that this can cause. Implicit in this is the lesson for heritage professionals to make sure that the heritage they manage is presented in an honest, ethical and inclusive manner that minimises dissonance. But what, precisely, does this mean in practice? What if those who 'own' the heritage are not professionals, but deeply committed and interested amateur volunteer enthusiasts who have made it their life's work over decades to conserve and look after the heritage, but who are not particularly interested in, or actively resistant to, issues that so concern professionals? These are some of the issues which periodically arise in the British Channel Islands over the most visible heritage of Occupation — the German fortifications, or 'bunkers'.     

The Exact Men of the North from Tool Makers to Historians

Abstract

This account of northern social scientists, historians, and machine-tool and astronomical instrument makers carries forward the author's construction of an intellectual profile of the North of England in previous articles. Principally by analysing entries in relevant biographical dictionaries, the author has demonstrated that northerners of distinction have been disproportionately numerous among 'men of science' in general and machine-tool engineers and astronomical instrument makers in particular, and — at least since the eighteenth century — among musicians and historians. Astronomical instrument makers and machine-tool engineers were above all exact men; so were the 'new' (scientific) historians like Stubbs and Mandell Creighton who followed the research methods of Leopold von Ranke; while the musicians produced in symphonies and oratorios exactly dovetailed, multi-layered structures of sound. A distinction is drawn between two forms of exactness: one of 'correspondence', the other of 'coherence'. The contrasted social contexts in which they are likely to arise are discussed. Musicians and historians (whose exactness lay in 'coherence') were big-city men; astronomical and mathematical instrument makers were more likely to have come down from the hills. The final result: the North was strongly represented in the front ranks of the nation's historians, mechanical engineers, and musicians; with only weak representation in the foremost ranks of social scientists and imaginative writers.     

Six months in the Himalaya

The Pentland Hills : their Paths and Passes. By W. A. S. With a Map. Edinburgh : Adam and Charles Black. 1885. Price 6d.

South France—From the Loire to the Mediterranean, and from the Bay of Biscay to the Rivers Arno and Po. The Island of Corsica, By O. B. Black. Fourth Edition. 1885. 38 Maps and 23 Plans. Edinburgh : Adam and Charles Black. Price, 7s. 6d.

North France—From the North Sea to the Loire, exclusive of Paris, and from the Bay of Biscay to the Rhine. By C. B. Black. New Edition. 1885. 19 Maps and 20 Plans. Edinburgh : Adam and Charles Black. Price, 7s. 6d.

Belgium—Rotterdam, Flushing, etc. By C. B. Black. New Edition. 1885. 10 Plans and 5 Maps. Edinburgh : Adam and Charles Black. Price, 2s. 6d.

China and the Roman Orient: Eesearches into their Ancient and Medi?val Relations, as represented in Old Chinese Records. By F. Hirth, Ph.D. Leipsic and Munich: Georg Hirth. Shanghai and Hong‐Kong : Kelly and Walsh. 1885.

Our South African Empire. By Wm. Greswell, M.A., F.R.C.S. In two volumes. London : Chapman and Hall (Limited), 1885.

Visitors’ Guide to Siena and San Gimignano. By J. L. Bevir, M.A. London : Edward Stanford. 1885. Pp. viii, and 232, including 4 pp. of Index.

Brazil and Java. Report on Coffee Culture in America, Asia, and Africa, to His Excellency the Minister of the Colonies. By C. F. van Delden Laërne. London : W. H. Allen and Co. The Hague : Martinus Nijhoff, 1885.

Notices Coloniales—Publiées à l'occasion de l'Exposition universelle d'Anvers au 1885. Paris : Imprimerie Nationale, 1885. Two volumes.

The Purple Land that England Lost. Travels and Adventures in the Banda ‐Oriental, South America. By W. H. Hudson. London : Sampson Low, Marston, and Co., 1885. 2 vols.; pp. 286 and 256. Price 21s.

Der Papua des dunkeln Inselreichs: im Lichte psychologischer Forschung. Von Adolf Bastian. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1885. Price 7 marks. Pp. 368, Index.