A case for lead-glaze experimentation by late eighteenth-century Catawba using portable X-ray Fluorescence (pXRF)

ABSTRACT

Recent research has demonstrated that Catawba ceramic practices changed abruptly and dramatically after 1759 following a devastating smallpox epidemic and subsequent community relocation. Pottery from the historically documented Catawba town of Old Town and others indicate potters adopted new techniques and styles as they adjusted to new economic and social conditions, including copying European vessel forms, experimenting with new ceramic paste recipes, and utilizing new decorative motifs. The identification of four lead-glazed sherds on otherwise Catawba-looking pale-bodied paste raises the possibility that Catawba potters may have also experimented with lead glazing. This paper presents the results of an elemental analysis of nearly 70 ceramic samples using pXRF and multivariate statistical techniques to identify patterns of production within pale-bodied colonowares. The results indicate that the glazed pottery fragments were made with elementally similar clay used by Catawbas in the Twelvemile Creek locality. I argue that in addition to modifying nearly every aspect of their ceramic repertoire, at least one Catawba potter experimented with lead glazing, providing further insights into the emergent Catawba pottery trade.     

Book Reviews

Abstract

One of the few maps made by the indigenous population of the Americas and dating from the early eighteenth century to have survived, either in original or copied form, is the subject of this article. The map, on deerskin, was given to the new governor of South Carolina, Francis Nicholson, by an unknown Native American. Entitled A Map Describing the Situation of the Several Nations of Indians between South Carolina and the Massissipi River, it has generally been attributed to the Catawba nation. After situating the map in its historical period and detailing the claims for a Catawba origin, these claims are refuted and evidence supplied for a Cherokee origin.     

Mid eighteenth-century tin-glazed earthenwares from the Delftfield Pottery,Glasgow: Excavation at the Broomielaw, 1975

Abstract

This report describes an excavation on the Broomielaw quayside opposite the site of the Delftfield Company’s works, which recovered kiln-wasters from an early phase of production. Appendix I covers all ceramic exports from Port Glasgow, 1742 to 1773, and some from Greenock. Appendix II contains notes on the family and other connections of some of the original potters who were recruited from Lambeth and elsewhere in 1748.     

Publishing Archaeological Excavations at the Digital Turn

ABSTRACT

This paper engages with repeated calls within archaeology for a re-envisioning of the excavation report, contextualized by the transformation of scholarly communication taking place across the humanities and social sciences. This widespread transformation is rooted in a growing interest in showing data together with synthesis and argument, the importance afforded to public engagement, and the proliferation of digital platforms that enable creative presentations of scholarly work. In this context, we discuss our experience producing an excavation report that attempts to integrate several forms of scholarly and public-facing communication on a digital platform, and aims to engage audiences at multiple levels, while simultaneously facilitating data reuse and laying out the authors’ current interpretations. We consider the benefits and challenges of producing work in this way through the example of producing the Gabii Project’s first volume, A Mid-Republican House from Gabii, developed through a collaboration between the Gabii Project team and the University of Michigan Press. This experience is contextualized within the broader discourse surrounding changing expectations about open access, authorship and credit, and sustainability of digital scholarship in academic publishing.     

Russia’s Natural Resources in the World Economy: history,review and reassessment

Abstract

Russia’s role in the global economic system today, and the Soviet Union’s in the past, is dominated by the export of natural resources, particularly oil and gas. The rents earned from these exports are both a source of strength and weakness, as they link the fortunes of Russia’s domestic economy to the volatility of global resource markets. This paper returns to a major research project conducted through the offices of the Association of American Geographers that resulted in Soviet Natural Resources in the World Economy, published in 1983. The project was first conceived in the aftermath of the resource crisis in the 1970s and concluded in the early 1980s as the Soviet Union sought to increase resource exports to support a failing domestic economy. This paper examines the origins, evolution, and management of this seminal work and presents a re-reading of the book in a contemporary context. We develop some of the key themes of the original project and conclude that it has contemporary relevance, as a reliance upon the resource sector remains a defining characteristic of Russia’s political economy and continues to shape Russia’s role in the global economy. We find that the regional dimension that was so important in the original project remains critical as Russia seeks to extend the resource frontier into new regions in the Arctic and the East and, at the same time, reduce its reliance on European markets – that are both stagnant and hostile – by developing new markets in Asia.     

An archaeology of poverty: architectural innovation and pauper experience at Madeley Union Workhouse,Shropshire

Abstract

One of the world’s most important industrial heritage sites, Ironbridge Gorge has been the focus of numerous archaeological investigations into the area’s early, innovative industrialization. The region’s important contribution to the development of institutional architecture and early social care has not been explored. An archaeological study of Madeley Union Workhouse exposes the complexity of the evolving ideologies surrounding pauperism in the late 19th century. This article broadens our understanding of Ironbridge by analysing the region’s response to poverty and the New Poor Law, and considers the impact of institutional architecture on pauper identity and experience.     

Beyond Revolution,Beyond the Law: Christian Anarchism in Conversation with Giorgio Agamben

ABSTRACT

The Christian anarchist tradition and the work of Giorgio Agamben fit within a subversive trajectory of political theology that critiques the state paradigm, while also operating at a distance from it in their creation of a newly imagined political community. This research asks what it could look like to conceive of a political community beyond the state, imagined from the subject position of the marginalized. It also seeks a mutually informed path towards the practical formation of such communities, as elaborated through a case study of the Anabaptist tradition. Agamben’s concepts provide a renovation of the political themes of Christian anarchism, including the ideas of moving beyond revolution, voluntary exile through the abdication of rights, and messianic vocation. As the space for political praxis within Agamben’s work continues to evolve, the Anabaptist tradition provides helpful practices to imagine a withdrawal from the governmental machine as a community of voluntary exiles.     

The impact of the school space on research methodology,child participation and safety: views from children in Zanzibar

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the impact of school environments as research spaces on participatory research methods, children’s agency and safety. The article draws on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork on children’s perceptions of protection programmes in state and Qur’anic schools in Zanzibar Town. Working with ‘draw & write’ and photovoice approaches disclosed issues with children’s safety in schools and highlighted limitations of participatory research in educational spaces. Drawing on Zanzibari children’s perspectives, I suggest that to improve fragile theoretical ideals about children’s participation in participatory approaches in educational settings, research processes need cultural sensitization and conceptualization in relation to the intersecting notions of place and personhood. This, as the paper shows, needs to guide and can help develop a respectful understanding of children’s lives. This paper contributes to discussions on childhood research ethics and constructions of ‘safe research spaces’.     

The business of D-Day: an exploratory study of consumer behaviour

In this exploratory study the symbolic aspects of heritage tourism are considered from a consumer behaviour perspective. A qualitative study was conducted of key tourist sites in the Normandy D-Day landing region of France. Museums, cemeteries, gun batteries, beaches and plinths comprise the key significant sites of tourist visitation to the region. Using two seminal consumer behaviour models, Holt’s four metaphors of consumption and Belk, Wallendorf, and Sherry’s ‘Sacred and Profane’ dichotomy experiences and perceptions of five academics and their interaction with site visitors were compiled, compared and interpreted using key concepts of authenticity and verisimilitude favoured by MacCannell. The result confirms the a priori hypothesis that economic imperatives are at odds with perceptions of quality and sacredness, leading to the commodification of otherwise venerable sites. A number of ‘quality determinants’ used to determine experience were also gleaned, namely historical significance, gravitas, ambience, number of exhibits, quality of exhibits, authenticity of exhibits, aesthetics in display and perceived respect in display. With due consideration to the criteria visitors used to determine experience quality, experience engineering can to some degree counter what appears to be an inversely proportional economic/quality dynamic.     

Farm and Threshing Mill at Poltimore Farm,Farway, Devon

Abstract

This article is based on a report compiled for English Heritage to accompany a series of measured drawings commissioned by them of the remarkably complete and well-maintained water-powered farm threshing mill at Poltimore Farm in east Devon. The machinery and buildings were recorded in January 1990, prior to repair and restoration work.     

REMARKABLE PHOTOGRAPHS OF CLARENCE B. MOORE’S EXPEDITION TO THE OUACHITA RIVER VALLEY,LOUISIANA, 1908–1909

Abstract

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Clarence Bloomfield Moore spent approximately 30 years visiting, excavating, and reporting on archaeological sites across the southeastern United States. During the latter 25 years of his research, Moore employed the sternwheel steamer Gopher as his primary mode of transportation. From early November 1908 until late April 1909, Moore and the Gopher, along with an experienced excavation team, the boat’s captain and crew, and several technical experts, examined sites along the Ouachita River in Louisiana and Arkansas. One of the members of this expedition was Arthur W. Clime, whose widow, Celia Clime, donated a number of photographs to the Smithsonian Institution that depict scenes from the Ouachita River work. These photographs of Clarence Moore’s field research are unique in that they provide an important glimpse into some of the earliest archaeological work conducted in Louisiana and into the field techniques employed by Moore.     

Gendered Inuinnait (Copper Inuit) landscapes of Banks Island’s northern interior,Arctic Canada, 17th–20th centuries a.d.

Abstract

Archaeological survey data from the northern interior of Banks Island in Canada’s western Arctic builds upon traditional interpretations of past land use to explore the ways in which this landscape was perceived by different groups. The data confirm earlier archaeological, ethnographic, and oral history work which suggest that the area was occupied primarily in the summer months at two separate times in the past: the Palaeoeskimo period and the Inuinnait (Copper Inuit) period. The earlier occupation was less intensive than the latter and both were focused on muskox hunting. Drawing on ethnographic studies of the Inuit in both the early and late 20th centuries, and on the distribution of archaeological camp sites versus hunting sites, a reconstruction is made of the different ways in which men and women experienced and understood the survey area during Inuinnait times. It suggests that the main drainages formed important travel routes, and that while women’s knowledge of the region was concentrated along these corridors and in favorite camping places, men’s knowledge extended into hunting areas beyond their peripheries.     

Towards ‘Embedded Non-creative Work’? Administration,digitisation and the recorded music industry

Abstract

For contemporary cultural policy, ‘non-creative’ work continues to form a conceptual blindspot: a foil to define and value creativity against. This paper develops existing categories to augment the task-focused notion of ‘embedded creativity’ with a more situated view of work’s cultural and institutional embedding. It first interrogates this ‘embeddedness’, taking a ‘cultural economy’ approach to intermediation and administrative support. Drawing on observations from an in-depth qualitative study of employees in major record labels, the second part articulates the heightened importance of ‘admin’ to recorded music industries, after ‘digital disruption’. Routine bureaucratic labour presents an atypical example, revealing much about the hidden relational and identity work that goes into constructing ‘creative industries’ as such. The intention is not to show that ‘embedded non-creative workers’ are in fact ‘creative’ but, on the contrary, to articulate the distinct contributions and value of support work in this context, questioning a persistent reliance on creative/non-creative dualisms. Policy research would benefit from enriched understanding of culture's assembly in marketable objects, reorienting understandings of ‘cultural’ labour markets and careers, and reimagining the role of traditional cultural ‘administration’ in the contemporary ‘creative economy’.     

NATIVE AMERICAN MATERIAL CULTURE FROM THE WALLACE BOTTOM SITE,SOUTHEASTERN ARKANSAS

Abstract

This paper synthesizes analyses of Native American artifacts collected at Wallace Bottom (3AR179) from 1998 to 2006. These artifacts offer the prospect of identifying the archaeological signature of the Quapaw people in the early colonial era, a decades-old conundrum in lower Mississippi Valley archaeology. While this artifact assemblage appears to date to the early colonial era (A.D. 1650–1750), it contrasts markedly with the archaeological “Quapaw phase” (Phillips 1970:943–944). The Wallace Bottom site now seems a good candidate for the location of both the Quapaw village of Osotouy and the French Arkansas Post. The native material from Wallace Bottom exhibits a generalized midwestern character, consistent with Degiha Siouan traditional narratives of migration. The material from Wallace Bottom and the neighboring Lake Dumond site also reflect continental scale interaction during the era in which the Quapaws and contemporary native societies of the historic period were taking form.     

An engineering career as industrial mission: Jack Keiser in post-war Britain

ABSTRACT

British mechanical engineer Jack Keiser’s postwar career in industrial education was simultaneously a career in justice work and Christian industrial mission. This paper examines the Christian critique of industry Keiser developed early in his career, as he transitioned in 1949–1950 into his life’s work in firm-based industrial education, and asks how historians of technology might interpret a critique that characterized industry in hyperbolic terms as enslaving or demonic. Keiser’s was part of an international critique connected to three important post-war Christian institutions: Student Christian Movement, the Industrial Mission Movement, and the World Council of Churches. He engaged with justice at both an intimate and a cosmic level, intimately through face-to-face relationships with apprentices and trainees under his supervision, and cosmically by engaging with the biblical prophets through whom God called for justice.     

Habermas’s Theological Turn and European Integration

Abstract

Jürgen Habermas’s recent work is defined by two trends: an engagement with the realm of the sacred and a concern for the future of the European Union. Despite the apparent lack of connection between these themes, I argue that the early history of European integration has important implications for Habermas’s conclusions about the place of faith in public life. Although Habermas’s work on religion suggests that the sacred contains important normative resources for postsecular democracies, he continues to bar explicitly religious justifications from discourse within state institutions. I question this exclusion of faith by reconstructing the role that political Catholicism played in the foundation of the European project. By focusing on two of the most important actors involved in the creation of the first European Community, French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman and German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, I show how explicitly religious reasons can broaden political perspectives, resulting in the creation of new, inclusive, postnational forms of communal life. Pushing Habermas to accept the implications of his theological turn, I argue that pluralistic, nondogmatic and nonauthoritarian religious claims should be allowed to enter into the formal public sphere through a discursively determined interpretation of secular translation.     

Rethinking historiography and ethnography: Surrealism’s intellectual legacy

ABSTRACT

Taking up Maurice Blanchot’s perceptive claim that “Surrealism remains always of our time”, the essay traces the importance of Surrealism for rethinking the methods of historiography (for Walter Benjamin) and ethnography (for James Clifford) in ways that allow us to appreciate the significance of Surrealism’s intellectual legacy. In his early essays on Surrealism and the monumental, unfinished work, The Arcades Project, Benjamin developed a new historical methodology, what I term surrealist historiography, that sought to uncover the latent dimensions of culture, obscured by the dazzling sheen of progress embedded within conventional historical narrative. If Benjamin found in Surrealism a way to overcome the limitations of a Rankean historicism, the point of departure for Clifford’s essay, “On Ethnographic Surrealism” is the crisis of ethnographic authority precipitated by a postcolonial critique of the discipline of anthropology. Clifford’s aim in this essay is thus to provide a provocative reassessment of Surrealism’s self-reflexive ethnographic spirit and what it might contribute to a refashioning of ethnographic practice as a polyvocal assemblage that holds in tension disparate material realities and aesthetic principles. Surrealism’s intellectual legacy thus lies, as Michel Foucault has claimed, in its path-breaking interdisciplinarity, which is why it continues to be, for Blancot and others, “a brilliant obsession”.     

A zoomorphic horticultural urn from Gosport,Hampshire

Abstract

A large ceramic urn with elaborate relief decoration was recently recovered in Gosport, Hampshire. It had been treated externally to imitate the stone urns used to contain shrubs and small trees in 17th- and early 18th-century formal gardens. This was only the second example of its kind known from Britain and its discovery in the backland of a small county town showed that such vessels were not restricted to high-status sites.     

The power of the “Stockpile”: American aid and China’s Wartime everyday

ABSTRACT

This article argues that American and British narratives about the existence of a “stockpile” of Chinese goods had a powerful impact on US-China relations, China’s war effort, and China’s wartime everyday. Focusing on both the material and discursive construction of the so-called stockpile in the early 1940s, the work seeks to deconstruct a powerful symbol that was long used by both British and American officials (particularly in the US War Department) to delegitimize the Nationalist government’s war effort against Japan. Drawing on sources collected at archives in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Taiwan, the article seeks to rethink many commonly held assumptions about American aid and to reveal the powerful influence that the symbolic presence of the stockpile had in shaping Sino-American relations in the wartime period and beyond.     

‘Her Cause Against Herself’: Margaret Fuller,Emersonian Democracy,and the Nineteenth‐Century Public Intellectual

Recent interpretations of Margaret Fuller's ideological significance have embedded her biography in an older understanding of Transcendentalism's history that imagines a post‐Brook Farm cleavage between ‘Emersonian individualists’ and more socially conscious communitarians. In late 1844, Margaret Fuller left New England for employment at Horace Greeley's New‐York Tribune, a moment that a number of biographers and critics have imagined as Fuller's own personal Brook Farm, her resignation from the ‘party of Emerson.’ Recent work in the history of Transcendentalism and romantic liberalism more generally, however, has been more careful about confusing romantic individuality with modern bourgeois individualism. This essay furthers the discussion of Transcendentalist ideology by arguing that Fuller's New York journalism was representative of the broad intellectual unity of the movement's democratic experiments – experiments that experientially, socially, and intellectually aimed to overcome the boundaries between the body and the mind, manual and mental labor, and the manual and mental classes.