Interest Groups,Federalism, and Water Quality in the Great Lakes: Chasing a Moving Target

Federalism often creates additional decisions for interest groups in determining how best to advocate for their policy recommendations in the legislative process. Should they focus their advocacy at the local, state, or national level of government? This article examines interest group behaviors in water quality policy in the Great Lakes region from 1960 to 2000. I evaluate the reasons for interest group decisions about which level of government to target, using historical analysis of Great Lakes water quality policy in the United States and Canada. The results of this analysis show that in many cases groups are influenced in their decision-making based on the level of government that has the greatest jurisdiction over the policy, supporting a neoinstitutional argument.     

Lake levels,mobility and lithic raw material selection and reduction strategies: A Great Lakes case study

Abstract

It has recently been proposed that lowered lake levels after 4250 BP broadened opportunities for mobility and interaction patterns among hunter-gatherer populations in the Saginaw drainage and in Michigan more broadly (; ). Here, data are presented on chipped stone reduction strategies as reflected in two site assemblages in Bay City, Michigan (20BY28, 20BY387) that bridge this key point in time. The earliest Late Archaic components of these sites, occupied during the higher than modern post Nipissing recession ca. 3200 BP, are typified by on-site reduction of local cherts, often utilising a bipolar reduction strategy. Subsequent uses of the area largely shifted to lower elevations. The more recent site components contain both more diverse projectile styles, many of which can be linked with Ontario types, and higher occurrences of non-local raw materials, specifically Onondaga chert apparently arriving at the site as preforms. The last use of these sites occurred during the Late Woodland, also during lower water levels approaching modern, and reflecting the highest use of Onondaga chert. We suggest that these changes resulted from shifting mobility and exchange patterns, facilitated in part by lowered post Nipissing water levels.     

Reinterpreting Springwells Ceramics in the Great Lakes Region of North America

The original ceramics typology developed for Younge/Western Basin Tradition Springwells phase (ca. AD 1160–1420) assemblages included three variants known as Macomb Linear, Macomb Interrupted Linear, and Springwells Net Impressed ceramics. This discussion considers how subregional variation in Springwells decorative styles reflects participation in a larger regional social network.     

Measuring Paleoindian range mobility and land-use in the Great Lakes/Northeast

Distance and direction to source data were compiled on the main toolstones employed at 83 Paleoindian sites with concave-based points (ca. 11,000–10,000 B.P.) from across the recently deglaciated Great Lake-Northeastern area of North America. These data were used in order to more rigorously evaluate several much debated ideas about annual range mobility scale and land use patterns and how they changed over time as these groups colonized and settled into the area. Movements are significantly biased to north–south axes, strongly suggesting these represent mainly seasonal moves and procurement of toolstones during regular travels rather than by specialized task groups. Means of comparing the scale of range mobility to ethnographic norms are explored and the results clearly show that these groups, especially the earliest occupants, had large annual range mobility scales and distinctive patterns of land use that are rarely seen or approached historically. They had to have been intensively targeting widely spaced but relatively abundant resources on the landscape. The only ethnographic groups who come close to such patterns historically were all caribou hunters, a perspective consistent with the idea these groups regularly exploited that resource. As long suggested, these land use patterns are probably related to the colonization of new lands in which there were little or no existing populations.     

Pollen evidence for major shifts in forest composition since the mid‐nineteenth‐century in the vicinity of Sudbury,Ontario

Numerous anthropogenic stressors have impacted the region surrounding Sudbury, Ontario, leading to pronounced vegetation and landscape change. Few long‐term records exist to understand the nature or timing of this change. We use pollen analysis from radiometrically dated sediments of Clearwater Lake to compare pre‐ and post‐settlement vegetation. Beginning ～1850 CE, the record shows major shifts in forest composition, coincident with settlement and the beginnings of lumbering. These changes are unprecedented for the past ～5000 years, and consist of increases in diversity and abundance of deciduous tree taxa and herbaceous disturbance indicators. While evidence of mining appears as early as 1900 CE, little effect is seen in the pollen record until ～1930 CE, when sedimentation rates increased and acidification of the lake also began. At this time, further increases in palynological disturbance indicators and minimum sediment organic matter levels indicate the period of maximum vegetation loss. As a result of reduced emissions since the 1970s, water quality began to improve in Clearwater Lake and there are some decreases in the abundances of shade‐intolerant disturbance indicators in the pollen record. However, the fact that the pollen assemblages do not resemble those prior to 1850 suggests lasting vegetation changes.     

Ground Penetrating Radar in the Northern Great Lakes: A Trial Survey of a Contact Period Occupation in Marquette County,Michigan

ABSTRACT

Timing, inclement weather, and limited budgets can obstruct archaeological survey efforts. Here, we ameliorate some of these with use of ground penetrating radar (GPR) at the Goose Lake Outlet #3 (GLO#3) site (20MQ140). GPR surveys to guide survey and excavation efforts in these well-drained sandy soils are limited. GPR imagery exhibited false positives; however, shovel probes, subsequent site excavation, and artifact analysis led to numerous discoveries at this protohistoric site—including glass trade beads dating to the 1630s. These discoveries solidify evidence for some of the earliest European-made trade items in the region and provide further confirmation for placement of an Indian trail and ancient travel corridor between Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. Two ¹⁴C samples obtained from moose-bone in features with trade goods fall within the expected occupation range of 1633–1668 and 1615–1647. Several anomolies, possible hearth clusters were seen on the GPR imagery; however, many features remained invisible.     

The technology of Stone Age colonization: an empirical,regional-scale examination of Clovis unifacial stone tool reduction,allometry, and edge angle from the North American Lower Great Lakes region

There is now broad consensus that the appearance of Clovis in Northeastern North America (Great Lakes, New England) represents a colonization pulse into recently deglaciated landscapes. Due to the increased resource uncertainty that comes with colonizing unfamiliar landscapes, it was hypothesized that the majority tool component of Clovis assemblages, unifacial stone tools, should have been knapped on tool blanks possessing the design properties of longevity and functional flexibility to facilitate exploration mobility and guard against the absence of toolstone sources in the new landscape. These properties are optimized by large, flat flakes, possessing large surface area relative to flake thickness. Since discarded and, at times, exhausted unifacial stone tools do not preserve the original dimensions of the blank upon which they were created – necessary items for a true test of blank morphology selection – this study presents a set of predictions for inferring whether Clovis unifacial stone tool blanks were selected for the properties of longevity and functional flexibility based on evidence that Clovis people actually capitalized on those properties. Due to the nature of Clovis unifacial stone tools, tool size was of necessity used as a proxy for tool reduction, on the grounds that smaller tools are more likely to have been resharpened than larger tools, at least in the case of unifacial flake tools. The results showed that less resharpened tools possessed flatter, less spherical shapes than the more resharpened tools, which possessed more globular, spherical shapes, suggesting Clovis foragers exploited the retouch potential afforded by the larger, flatter blanks. Edge angles showed no relationship with tool reduction, suggesting that Clovis foragers exploited the functional flexibility afforded by flatter blanks by adjusting the edge angle to be either higher or lower as needed. These results are consistent with the notion that human colonizers, who did not know the abundance or location of stone outcrops prior to settling an unfamiliar territory, not only “geared up” before leaving a stone source, but geared up as efficiently as possible by carefully selecting the blanks they chose to carry. Broader implications for such careful unifacial stone tool blank selection are discussed.     

Woodland Pottery Function,Cooking, and Diet in the Upper Great Lakes of North America

A multidimensional approach to functional analysis was employed to examine pottery use, cooking, and subsistence in pre-European North American contexts. A variety of analytic techniques were applied to ceramic assemblages from two sites on the south shore of Lake Superior: the Middle Woodland Naomikong Point site and the Late Woodland Sand Point site. The analyses of both technical attributes and use-alteration traces suggest that a majority of pottery vessels from these sites were used for cooking throughout the Woodland period. Lipid residue analysis corroborates traditional subsistence information but specifies which foods were cooked in pottery vessels. Vessel size varies according to context rather than by time or by function, with larger vessels associated with ritual areas and smaller vessels originating from domestic spheres, a trend potentially related to feasting behavior. Interior carbonization patterns change in frequency between the Middle and Late Woodland periods, suggesting a shift in cooking and possibly subsistence practices.     

Vagrant,Convict, Cannibal Chief: Abel Magwitch and the Culture of Cannibalism in Great Expectations

Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations opens with a jolt, as Abel Magwitch – an escaped convict – pounces on the narrator and protagonist, Pip. Despite this rather dramatic introduction, and the pivotal role that he goes on to play in the plot, Magwitch has never been given the sustained critical analysis that he warrants. More often than not he has been treated as one of Dickens’s infamous ‘flat’ characters; a kind of ‘pantomime wicked uncle’, in the words of George Orwell. This is a critical legacy that this paper seeks to redress. Seeing Magwitch as an essential element in Dickens’s critique of mid nineteenth-century society, this paper examines Magwitch’s largely ignored peripatetic and homeless past. By contextualizing Magwitch in his role as a vagrant outsider, and then exploring how this marginal position nuances the cannibalistic appetite he displays in the first pages of the novel, I argue that Magwitch’s violence and ‘savagery’ forms a foil for the more sadistic practices of civilized society. In doing so I position Magwitch at the dark heart of Dickens’s social pessimism, and re-evaluate the culture of cannibalism that we see in Great Expectations.     

Shell-gathering from mangroves and the seasonality of the Southeast Asian Monsoon using high-resolution stable isotopic analysis of the tropical estuarine bivalve (Geloina erosa) from the Great Cave of Niah, Sarawak: methods and reconnaissance of molluscs of early Holocene and modern times

This paper describes a reconnaissance, high-resolution, study of stable isotopes (δ¹⁸O and δ¹³C) from modern shells of the estuarine bivalve Geloina erosa, and those dated to the early Holocene that were harvested by people from mangroves near the Great Cave of Niah on the north coast of Borneo. This reconnaissance study provides high-resolution palaeoclimatic-palaeohydrological information concerning early human activity in the region and the past character of the Southeast Asian Monsoon. Laser ablation continuous flow isotope ratio mass spectrometry (LA-CF-IRMS) on modern shells of Geloina erosa revealed ‘saw-tooth’ stable isotopic profiles that bear a close resemblance to peaks and troughs of trends in recent local rainfall, including the 1998 El Niño drought, highlighting the potential of Geloina erosa for reconstructing seasonality of the Southeast Asian Palaeomonsoon. LA-CF-IRMS analysis of prehistoric shells of Geloina erosa held in the Harrisson Archives of the Sarawak Museum revealed cyclical shifts in δ¹⁸O with similar amplitudes of variation as found in modern shells of Geloina erosa. As at the present day, this probably reflects the changing seasonality of the monsoon rains with shifts to negative δ¹⁸O values during periods of high runoff. Lighter mean δ¹⁸O values of the prehistoric shells, however, may indicate a greater annual surplus of rainfall and possibly consistent with the early Holocene strengthening of the summer monsoon at that time. The similarity of the last growth increment δ¹⁸O of the prehistoric shells to their mean δ¹⁸O profile values suggests that gathering took place during times of moderate runoff.     

馆藏文物数字影像指标体系的规范、管理与应用

随着信息时代的来临,数字化手段的应用日益在社会生活中占据重要的地位,博物馆的发展也离不开对这一科学生产方式使用。通过对博物馆藏品影像数字化工作状况的分析、介绍及其意义的阐发,指出文物的数字影像信息是博物馆各项工作开展的重要资源,它的合理开发与应用涉及了博物馆工作的各个主要方面。博物馆的未来在于数字化,博物馆数字化的关键在于文物数字影像资料的科学开发、利用和管理。