Old World Traditions, New World Landscapes: Ethnicity and Archaeology of Swiss-Appenzellers in the Colonial South Carolina Backcountry

German-speaking Swiss immigrants from the Appenzell region of Switzerland settled in the South Carolina frontier township of New Windsor in 1737. After initially establishing an insular physical and social relationship with the dominant Anglophone population, the Swiss adopted strategies that increasingly integrated them into the greater regional society. Theory of ethnicity informs archaeological, testamentary, and landholding data concerning the symbolic action of the Swiss to assert and then transform their cultural identity. Evidence of competition, ethnocentrism, and differential power reflects the dynamic process of ethnogenesis that characterizes the South Carolina frontier.     

America and Japan in the World Arena

Book reviewed in this article:
Walter LaFeber, The Clash: A History of U.S.-Japan Relations     

The Two Cultures and a World Apart: Archaeology and Science at a New Crossroads

Within the past decade or so, archaeology has increasingly utilised and contributed to major advances in scientific methods when exploring the past. This progress is frequently celebrated as a quantum leap in the possibilities for understanding the archaeological record, opening up hitherto inaccessible dimensions of the past. This article represents a critique of the current consumption of science in archaeology, arguing that the discipline’s grounding in the humanities is at stake, and that the notion of ‘interdisciplinarity’ is becoming distorted with the increasing fetishisation of ‘data’, ‘facts’ and quantitative methods. It is argued that if archaeology is to break free of its self-induced inferiority to and dependence on science, it must revitalise its methodology for asking questions pertinent to the humanities.     

Critical Periods in Science and the Science of Critical Periods: Canine Behavior in America

This article offers a canine history of the “critical period” concept, situating its emergence within a growing, interdisciplinary network of canine behavior studies that connected eugenically minded American veterinarians, behavioral geneticists, and dog lovers with large institutional benefactors. These studies established both logistical and conceptual foundations for large-scale science with dogs while establishing a lingering interdependence between American dog science and eugenics. The article emphasizes the importance of dogs as subjects of ethological study, particularly in the United States, where some of the earliest organized efforts to analyze canine behavior began. Further, the article argues that the “critical period” is important not only for its lasting prominence in multiple fields of scientific inquiry, but also as a historiographical tool, one that invites reflection on the tendency of historians to emphasize a particular narrative structure of scientific advancement.     

Historical Archaeology and the Post-Columbian World of North America

Historical archaeology, with its interest in material culture and its use of the broader perspectives of anthropology and anthropological archaeology, has contributed to a distinctive understanding of the North American experience. Historical archaeologists have, to varying degrees, investigated the material traces of class, race, gender, and state formation. These studies provide an understanding of the origin of many of the social practices that undergird modern culture, a necessary, though neglected, case in a unified anthropological archaeology's goal of writing innovative world histories.     

Regional governance and legitimacy in South America: the meaning of UNASUR

Over the last decade, rapid changes to development models and market rules have led—yet again—to a revision of the meaning of regionalism, bringing to the fore the role of regional organizations in anchoring democracy and supporting progressive social policies. This is particularly the case in South America, where the presence of regional organizations in public policy‐making is a subject of increasing scrutiny. This article examines new forms of politically sensitive regional governance in South America, focusing in particular on the case of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR). It shows how contemporary South American regionalism bypasses the questions of trade and investment that dominated earlier schemes of regionalism in order to focus on shoring up democracy and managing the regional social deficit. The article explores UNASUR's actions in two policy areas: supporting the regional democratic norm and health policy. UNASUR, this article argues, is developing a hybrid form of output‐focused legitimacy that rests on a combination of credible commitments to welfare promotion, especially for the poor, and the pursuit of collective public goods, alongside a robust defence of quite minimal but uncontroversial standards of procedural democracy across the region. The analysis challenges the view that regionalism has failed in South America and identifies instead the emergence of a new sort of highly political regionalism. We call for UNASUR to be taken more seriously in the literature on comparative regionalism and, indeed, for a revision of how regionalism more widely is understood in Latin America.