Is obsidian sourcing about geochemistry or archaeology? A reply to Speakman and Shackley

The response from Speakman and Shackley to my paper highlights a number of important issues currently facing archaeological sourcing research. Many of these issues, however, have little to do with HHpXRF itself and more to do with an artificial crisis triggered by specialists' concerns about a hitherto restricted technique becoming available to a wider community. Despite their mantra of “validity and reliability,” Speakman and Shackley erroneously equate these two concepts with the accuracy of an instrument's measurements. Additionally, they mischaracterise a self-contained test, conducted with specific parameters (i.e., “off-the-shelf” operation), as an endeavour to facilitate or endorse poor-quality data. Paradoxically, their disparagement of experimental internal consistency as “silliness” is incongruous with their own data. Furthermore, a discussion focused on handheld instruments is obfuscated by their inclusion of desktop instruments that are “portable” only in the sense of luggable to an electrical outlet in a laboratory context. Most troubling is that they envision themselves as the arbiters of science vs. “playing scientist.” Contrary to their claims, HHpXRF proliferation will improve reproducibility and archaeological results.     

Focusing on Chinese nationalism: an inherently flawed perspective? A reply to Allen Carlson

My article replies to Allen Carlson's critique of the existing literature on Chinese nationalism (Carlson's article was published in Volume 15, issue 1 of Nations and Nationalism, 2009). I address Carlson's criticisms and proceed to evaluate his proposal to move away from an allegedly unhelpful focus on nationalism towards the allegedly more illuminating framework of national identity construction. My approach to the existing literature on Chinese nationalism acknowledges efforts made within it at grappling with issues of theory and definition and builds on this acknowledgement to operate a selective appraisal of its strengths and weaknesses. I argue that while some of the problems identified by Carlson do indeed plague the literature, his advocacy of abandoning nationalism as a focus of research is unwarranted. There is continuing validity in using nationalism as a lens for understanding how China sees its place in the world.     

A Late Hellenistic–Early Roman Fortress at Khirbat Mudayna as-Saliya,Central Jordan

ABSTRACT

Mudayna as-Saliya is a fortress site at the summit of an isolated promontory near the eastern end of Wadi Mujib, central Jordan. Archaeological surveys of the site have exposed potential evidence of Iron Age and classical period use with its occupational zenith in the late Hellenistic-early Roman period. The ruin on the surface is remarkably similar in architectural and hydrological design to the fortress of Machaerus. This paper, based on available survey data, suggests that the Hasmoneans were responsible for the construction of the fortress at Mudayna as-Saliya, which was reused by the Nabateans during the early Roman period. Finding a potential Hasmonean desert fortress on the desert fringe of eastern Transjordan was unexpected, and it might have significant ramifications for the study of Hasmonean, Herodian, and Nabatean kingdoms in central Jordan.     

A Very Moderate Socialist Indeed? R. H. Tawney and Minimum Wages

R. H. Tawney has been placed alongside G. D. H. Cole and HaroldLaski as one of the most important contributors to British socialistthought this century. But, on the issue of poverty wages, Tawneywas circumspect and conventional. In supporting such a modestreform as the 1909 Trade Boards Act, he was concerned with pragmaticconsiderations. His two studies of chainmaking and tailoring,funded by the Ratan Tata foundation and carried out at the LondonSchool of Economics, show him to be more concerned with moderate(and, in his opinion, workable) policies rather than radicalideas. In order to prove the boards a success, Tawney exaggeratedtheir advantages. It can be argued that what was required toend low pay was not industry-based trade boards, but a nationalminimum wage based on an agreed living income. Whilst Tawneyrejected Beatrice and Sidney Webb's national minimum wage asbeing overly based at the subsistence level, he also dismisseda more generous minimum on the grounds that it might be abovewhat an individual trade could bear. Although Tawney's ideaswere highly influential, they were an inadequate guide to solutionsto the problems of low pay in the twentieth century.     

Dr. H.F. Verwoerd en die Ossewa-Brandwag 1938–1952

Abstract

South Africa's railway and harbours operator (SAR&;H) was the arch promoter of overseas tourism to South Africa for thirty years after Union in 1910. To its package tours for independent inbound tourists, the SAR&;H added exclusive port-to-port rail trips across South Africa by partnering with overseas cruise ship operators. Whereas the European market was a mainstay, the more distant North American market only became accessible in relation to lengthy round-the-world cruises. Between 1926 and 1939 approximately fifty long-distance luxury trains met thirty-one cruise liners to transport some 5,000 wealthy tourists through various inland scenic, cultural and wildlife attractions in southern Africa. Port calls by visiting cruise liners created their own spectacle and stir. Eventually more cruise passengers elected to stay on board ship at the end of long ocean voyages, elite visitors took cross-country flights to increase the novelty of travel, and this first period of South African sea-rail tourism came to a close.     

A Place to Rest Your (Burnt) Bones? Mortuary Houses in Early Anglo-Saxon England

This article presents a fresh interpretation of square and rectangular mortuary structures found in association with deposits of cremated material and cremation burials in a range of early Anglo-Saxon (fifth-/sixth-century AD) cemeteries across southern and eastern England. Responding to a recent argument that they could be traces of pyre structures, a range of ethnographic analogies are drawn upon, and the full-range of archaeological evidence is synthesized, to re-affirm and extend their interpretation as unburned mortuary structures. Three interleaving significances are proposed: (i) demarcating the burial place of specific individuals or groups from the rest of the cemetery population, (ii) operating as ‘columbaria’ for the above-ground storage of the cremated dead (i.e. not just to demarcate cremation burials), and (iii) providing key nodes of commemoration between funerals as the structures were built, used, repaired and eventually decayed within cemeteries. The article proposes that timber ‘mortuary houses’ reveal that groups in early Anglo-Saxon England perceived their cemeteries in relation to contemporary settlement architectures, with some groups constructing and maintaining miniaturized canopied buildings to store and display the cremated remains of the dead.     

A ‘SMALL TOWN’ DISCOVERED TWICE: A FORGOTTEN REPORT OF MAJOR H. H. KITCHENER

Abstract

This paper revisits the contribution of the Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF) to the study of the ancient copper mines of Faynan, Jordan. It reveals that it was a PEF expedition that first reported smelting remains in the northern part of the Faynan region, and demonstrates that the reported remains are the Iron Age site of Khirbat al-Jariya.     

Slavic,European, or Asiatic? F. H. Duchinski on the Origins of the Russian People

The emergence of Russia as a dominant force in Europe from the early nineteenth century onward was characterized by growing tensions between Russians and Poles as seen in the recurring Russian suppression of Polish uprisings. F. H. Duchinski (1817–93) who, like other Polish intellectuals, tried to uncover the root causes of these political tensions, concluded that Russians were neither Slavic nor European, but Asians, and it was this fact alone, he believed, that accounted for the continuing Russian hostility toward the Poles.