Flush with the Past: An Insight into Late Nineteenth-Century Hungate and its Role in Providing a Better Understanding of Urban Development

The discovery in 2007 of the remains of a late nineteenth- to early twentieth-century communal toilet block within the Block E excavations at Hungate, York, has delivered an important insight into the development of the Hungate area across this period. Re-contextualizing this discovery, from the local to the global and back again, challenges the official historical narratives of Hungate and the dissimilar archaeologies of the modern city.     

Using lithic assemblage formation to approach Middle Palaeolithic settlement dynamics: El Salt Stratigraphic Unit X (Alicante,Spain)

The superposition of anthropogenic remains usually results in archaeological palimpsests, hindering an accurate characterization of the behavior underlying such remains. Aimed at facing this methodological constraint in the study of Palaeolithic contexts, we present a contextual approach to Neanderthal settlement dynamics based on an understanding of lithic assemblage formation processes. We focused on a set of lithic artifacts from the Middle Palaeolithic site of El Salt. With the goal of isolating temporally constrained units of behavioral analysis, we analyzed the spatial distribution of lithic, faunal and combustion remains. Then, the lithic records from each of the resulting units were analyzed from a genetic and technical perspective. This goal was achieved by identifying lithic Raw Material Units (RMU) through observations on reduction processes, refits and their spatial distribution. Our results suggest that El Salt SU X lithic remains represent several diachronic human occupation episodes and different site functions. This study illustrates the benefit of investigating lithic assemblage formation processes to alleviate the palimpsest problem in Palaeolithic contexts.     

Beyond Metrics: Reappraising York’s Hungate “Slum”

Much of the excitement generated in Britain since 2007 by the York Archaeological Trust’s excavations of the city’s Hungate neighborhood, which Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree characterized as a “slum” in his pioneering poverty survey of 1901, derives from the unexpected volume and variety of material evidence uncovered about life in a poor community within a modern industrial city. Such material evidence and its often uncertain relationships to other historical data can enhance analysis by complicating understanding of the past, rather than echoing conventional wisdom. Findings from Hungate can thus contribute to nuanced understandings of urban social disadvantage not only at the neighborhood level in this one particular British city, but at the larger scales of analysis that encompass the growth of cities and interacting urban regions in Britain and around the world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These understandings have contemporary relevance for a world in which over half of humanity now lives in urban areas, as misconceptions about “slums” continue to undermine efforts to reduce urban inequality.     

ZooMS: making eggshell visible in the archaeological record

Avian eggshell is a common component of many archaeological deposits, but its archaeological potential remains largely unexplored. The most obvious reasons are two-fold. Firstly, despite its abundance on many sites, eggshell is often overlooked during excavation. Even when it is recovered, small fragmented remains are difficult to identify taxonomically. Here we introduce a minimally destructive qualitative analytical technique for taxonomic identification of eggshell fragments based on highly sensitive mass spectrometry and peptide mass fingerprinting (ZooMS), and illustrate its application to eggshell recovered from the Viking Age urban site at Hungate, York. We adopt a more extreme version of the method of bleach treating used to prepare ancient eggshell for DNA analysis, followed by conventional peptide mass fingerprinting using MALDI-ToF mass spectrometry. The development of this technique will allow future research to make better use of eggshell fragments recovered from archaeological sites.     

Poverty in Depth: New International Perspectives

This volume on the archaeology of urban poverty arises from a three-day symposium hosted by York Archaeological Trust and the University of York in July 2009 to establish the wider intellectual framework for the investigation of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century archaeology of the Hungate neighborhood of York. In this opening article, the trajectory of medieval and post-medieval archaeology in Britain is contrasted with historical archaeology in the United States and Australia, and the influence of the pre-modern history of the Hungate neighborhood on its development since 1800 is explored.     

A taphonomic study of a carcass consumed by griffon vultures (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Gyps fulvus</Emphasis>) and its relevance for the interpretation of bone surface modifications

Vultures are ubiquitous taphonomic agents in most biomes. However, taphonomic studies of vultures are scarce and very little is known of the damage they cause to bone surfaces when consuming carcasses. This study presents the results of a taphonomic analysis of bones modified by griffon vultures. Although some marks created by these agents are diagnostically unique, others are extremely similar to modifications caused by other biostratinomic processes. This renders interpretations of marks on bones very problematic when these modifications are considered in isolation rather than at the assemblage and contextual levels.     

The Biography of a Settlement: An Analysis of Middle Iron Age Deposits and Houses at Howe,Orkney

The extensively excavated enclosed broch village at Howe, near Stromness on Mainland, Orkney, was one of the most important excavations of the latter half of the twentieth century in Scotland. The near-complete excavation of such an extensive and well-preserved settlement, with a large material assemblage, allows a detailed analysis of depositional practices. Little attempt was made in the published report to explore the spatial and contextual distributions of finds, and this article reconsiders the evidence, providing an analysis of settlement deposits during the main phase of occupation in the Middle Iron Age. The study aims to develop a broader understanding of the nature of settlement space on this highly structured and complex settlement. The analysis has demonstrated that a number of patterns are visible in the deposition of materials, and the temporality of the deposits suggest that the majority of depositional events were connected with major structural changes on the site. Transitional moments in the lifecycle of the settlement were thus marked in specific ways by the occupants. The analysis highlights the entangled nature of people, objects and constructed spaces in the Iron Age.     

The Taphonomy of the Final Middle Stone Age Fauna from Sibudu Cave,South Africa

This study applies a taphonomic analysis to the final Middle Stone Age faunal assemblage from Sibudu Cave, South Africa, by assessing bone surface modifications, breakage patterns and skeletal element abundances. Cut marks, percussion marks, severe fragmentation and the high frequency of burned bone combine to demonstrate that human behaviour was the principal agent in the assemblage's formation. These results are consistent with previous research on earlier occupations of Sibudu during the Middle Stone Age. Moreover, this assemblage is proposed to reflect regular site maintenance and cleaning. This conclusion is consistent with previous research that demonstrates systematic site maintenance during the Middle Stone Age at Sibudu and emphasises this behaviour as being a consistent activity for Middle Stone Age foragers. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Integrating pattern and context in spatial archaeology

Traditional approaches to intrasite spatial analysis in archaeology have concentrated on identifying associations among classes of artifacts over a site surface. This focus has tended to ignore the possible effects of contextual constraints on inter-class relationships, for example the “gravity effects” of hearth features on object deposition. Consequently, sets of co-occurring artifact classes defined in space are usually ascribed behavioural significance as “tool kits”, even though they may represent unrelated objects simply discarded into the same spatial location. This paper attempts to illustrate this problem through contextual integration of artifact and feature distributions. Quantitative methods are employed to carry out contextual spatial analysis of artifact distributions from the Upper Palaeolithic rockshelter site Le Flageolet I (Dordogne, France). Results indicate that associations among artifact classes in space might be constrained by feature locations at Le Flageolet I and that contextual interpretations are warranted for the observed inter-class relations.     

Should dates trump context? Evaluation of the Cave 7 skeletal assemblage radiocarbon dates

“Massacre” was the accepted interpretation for a prehistoric skeletal assemblage of around 90 individuals from Cave 7 in the SE Utah of the North American Southwest since the 1890s. Coltrain and others (Journal of Archaeological Science 39, 2220–2230) rejected this account based on a dispersed suite of AMS radiocarbon dates on purified bone collagen from the interred individuals. Since dates from skeletons exhibiting perimortem damage were scattered across some 400 radiocarbon years, Coltrain et al. argued for multiple interments of victims of violence and related kin spread across several centuries. The temporal placement of interment events in Cave 7 clearly cannot be known independent of radiocarbon assays but such assays should not be privileged above contextual information about which individuals were interred together unless verified by an independent dating laboratory. Only by ignoring important information about burial context in the 1893 field record can the dates of Coltrain et al. be accepted as accurate estimates of time of death. We redated residual collagen from 11 of the Cave 7 individuals because of significant contextual anomalies with some of the prior results. The new assays combined with contextual evidence demonstrate that some of Coltrain et al.’s dates are either too old or too young; the dates are neither sufficiently accurate (true estimates of sample age) nor sufficiently precise (small confidence intervals) to refute a single-event massacre or to confirm multiple interment events in Cave 7. Nonetheless, dates that meet these criteria disclose at least two interment events, a large one of mostly adult males, many exhibiting perimortem damage (a massacre assemblage), and a small one consisting of an adult female with three children. A third interment event of a few adult females and child is possible based primarily on context since the date distribution in this case overlaps substantially with that of the massacre victims; context also hints at other interment events. Aside from chronology we clarify the number of Basketmaker individuals interred at the site and the incidence of perimortem violence. A single-event mass killing continues to be the most likely interpretation for around 58 individuals, mostly adult males (at least 35) but also adult females and children. This incident occurred between cal. AD 20–80 and doubtless had a significant social impact at the time because of its scale, reverberating throughout the early farming communities of the Southwest.     

Household Archaeology, Lifecycles and Status in a Nineteenth-Century Australian Coastal Community

The analysis of a ceramic assemblage from a late nineteenth-century site in a coastal town near Melbourne, Australia, is used to explore issues relating to household cycles and comparative status. Acquisition of household goods closely matches the stages of growth and decline in family size and the nature of the assemblage has directed further research into the relative status of the family.     

Neoliberal privatisation? Remapping the public and the private in Sydney's masterplanned residential estates

The analysis of neoliberalism has become a key point of departure in critical urban studies and political geography. Its application in theorising new forms of residential environments is no exception. Common interest developments, gated communities and, in the Australian case, masterplanned residential estates (MPREs) are cast as vehicles of neoliberalist privatisation, extending private property rights and embedding market logics and neoliberal modes of privatised governance. This paper is a critical theoretical and empirical engagement with the interpretation of these residential developments as iconic expressions of urban neoliberalisation. We bring poststructuralist thinking on neoliberalism as an assemblage of diverse practices and projects together with poststructuralist conceptions of the public and private as contextual and enacted political constructions, to provide an alternative analytic—an analytic of assemblage—for investigating putative pathways of neoliberal privatisation. We suggest the purchase of this extended framework through an exploration of MPRE development by Sydney's largest MPRE developer. In this framework, MPREs become contingent productions in which multiple and overdetermined projects, practices and paradigms of governance are at work including, amongst others, social sustainability and interventionism. Rather than producing neoliberal privatisation, we explore how MPRE developments involve the complex constitution of new forms of public and private that exceed coding as neoliberal. We conclude that the framework engaged with here can enable productive advances for urban theorising. Its emphasis on practice, enactment, multiplicity and assemblage can resist a tendency to reify urban neoliberalism and nurture the development of new conceptions and discourses of urban governance less bound to the neoliberal imaginary.     

体育旅游资源开发及营销

体育旅游是近年来国内外旅游研究中的新兴课题。本文简述了体育旅游研究的产生背景,从营销角度探讨了大型体育赛事的旅游功效评价;在尝试对体育旅游进行类型划分的同时,分析了这些类型划分对有关体育旅游发展战略的影响。     

Estimating parent population of pottery vessels from a sample of fragments: a case study from inter-tidal surface collections,Roviana Lagoon,Solomon Islands

Archaeologists frequently interpret the duration and type of prehistoric occupation at a location/site from the relative abundance of prehistoric materials (accumulations research). Taphonomic factors have the potential to alter substantially the archaeological record leading to inaccurate assumptions about the nature of prehistoric settlement. Where vessel families of potsherds can be established, we provide a general method to estimate the parent population from which the sample of sherds derives, through analysis of vessel completeness of the sample. This provides a basis for archaeological interpretation of the scale of discard represented at a location. The approach used has broad applicability to many archaeological settings where behavioural inferences are made from poorly preserved ceramic samples. Statistical analysis of a ceramic assemblage from Roviana Lagoon stilt villages indicates that most of the ceramic assemblage has been destroyed over time. An unexpectedly severe taphonomic regime is inferred for this relatively sheltered landlocked lagoon setting. Rather than marking an ephemeral occupation, estimating a parent ceramic population indicates instead that early stilt village sites in the Solomon Islands region were probably permanently occupied for several centuries. Results also suggest that the relative absence of recorded Lapita sites in the main Solomon Islands, and possibly elsewhere in Near Oceania may be a result of a harsh taphonomic regime for the remains of stilt village occupation.     

Vessel Glass from Kaupang: A Contextual and Social Analysis

The article presents ideas about distribution and consumption of vessel glass in the Viking Age arising from a contextual analysis of finds from Kaupang. Considering aspects of spatial distribution and waste handling, it is argued that the sherd assemblage primarily represents vessels used and broken on the site – and not vessels in transit or cullet collected for recycling as previously suggested. The glass vessels should most likely be associated with wine drinking and be related to the use of ceramic pitchers and spouted jars. Tableware of this kind represents a material culture that was not confined to elite consumption but available to merchants and artisans inhabiting production and market places – like Kaupang – with good contacts to Continental wine districts. It is suggested that its use was triggered by adoption of Continental table etiquette rather than any status associations. The concept of commodification is introduced to explain the transformation vessel glass went through in Northern Europe during the 8th and 9th centuries, from an item of luxury gift exchange to an alienable commodity.     

People and Their Buildings in the Working-Class Neighborhood of Hungate,York

The study of structures plays an important role in the global investigation of the archaeology of urban poverty. At Hungate, the built environment is central to our analysis of this “slum” neighborhood. By piecing together the long-term details for the construction, ownership, occupation, and adaptation of domestic structures in the form of sophisticated interdisciplinary plot histories, we can provide depth to the development of neighborhoods which came under the scrutiny of reformers such as Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree at the beginning of the twentieth century.     

Concentration Effects,Spatial Mismatch,or Neighborhood Selection? Exploring Labor Market and Neighborhood Variations in Male Unemployment Risk Using Census Microdata from Great Britain

A classification of census enumeration districts has recently been added to the 1991 British Census 2% Sample of Anonymised Records (SAR). Through the use of multilevel modeling techniques, the area classification information on the SAR is used to investigate geographical differences in unemployment. Previous research has indicated that where a person lives can affect their propensity to unemployment. However, the understanding of these relationships are confounded by the reciprocal nature of the relationship between unemployment, housing, and geographical location. This paper examines the relative importance of the individual, the type of neighborhood of residence, and the local labor market in which one lives in explaining variations in unemployment risk. It also examines the role of housing tenure at an individual and contextual level in mediating this relationship. Two competing hypotheses are evaluated. The first is that local concentrations of unemployment are the result of the process of neighborhood selection. The other suggests there are contextual affects on unemployment risk, which may include access to job opportunities and “concentration effects.” The paper concludes that most neighborhood level variation in unemployment is due to housing market effects, particularly neighborhood selection. As well as offering insights into the relationship between unemployment and geographical location, this paper aims to demonstrate methodological innovations in the analysis of census microdata. In particular it shows how area classifications can be used in conjunction with microdata in a multilevel modeling framework, to get a better understanding of the role of individual and contextual factors in social processes.     

Technological,Functional and Contextual Aspects of the K2 and Mapungubwe Worked Bone Industries

Mapungubwe (AD 1220–1290) is generally regarded as the first urban centre in southern Africa, functioning as the seat of power for an extensive but short-lived polity. More than 80 years of excavations here, and at its nearby predecessor K2 (c. AD 1000–1220), resulted in a substantial assemblage of material remains from elite and commoner contexts. This assemblage includes a large collection of worked bone objects, such as needles, awls, tubes and objects of personal adornment. Of particular interest are the bone arrowheads and link-shafts, of which a significant number of specimens were found complete and intact. Such quantities of well-preserved worked bone objects are unique in the archaeological record of the region. The worked bone assemblages from these two sites provide a rare opportunity to study multiple components of the production process as well as the use context of bone objects. In this paper, we characterise the K2 and Mapungubwe worked bone industries through various morphological, technological, use-trace and contextual approaches and discuss the significance of these aspects in terms of raw material selection and manufacture and archaeological use context. In particular, this study shows the complexity of these worked bone industries over time.     

Ceramic style analysis in archaeology and ethnoarchaeology: Bridging the analytical gap

A refitting study with a sample of sherds from Broken K Pueblo indicates that at least some of the “patterning” in the assemblage identified by Hill (1970, Anthropological Papers of the University of Arizona 18) results from unrecognized whole vessels and large conjoinable sherds. It is argued that contemporary stylistic analyses are based on many of the same analytical methods employed in the Broken K study and that research findings of ethnoarchaeology are rarely applied in the analysis of prehistoric ceramics. Despite archaeologists' increasing awareness of formation processes, spurred by ethnoarchaeological research, analytic methods that identify and take into account the effects of these processes on archaeological ceramic assemblages are underdeveloped. Suggestions are offered to resolve this problem, for both archaeological and ethnoarchaeological ceramic analysis, that may permit archaeologists to discover in prehistoric assemblages the same types of relationships identified in systemic assemblages.