WEST AFRICAN METALS AND THE ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN

Summary. Contact between the Mediterranean in Roman or earlier times and the Sahara and lands beyond has commonly been examined from the northern angle with rather negative results (as for instance in Mortimer Wheeler's Rome Beyond the Imperial Frontiers, 1954). Although West African archaeology is still at an infant stage, it is now becoming possible to examine the issue from a southern, inner African, angle. (The multi-volume Cambridge History of Africa, 1975-, and the less consistent UNESCO General History of Africa, 1981-, document some of the progress made in reconstructing the African side of the story.) And, while substantial trans-Saharan communications did not develop till late in the first millennium A. D. with camel-caravans, stimulated especially by the gold of Far-West Africa, evidence is emerging of earlier exploitation of other metals, perhaps connected with horse (and cart?) transport. At two localities on the southern Saharan edge there was copper mining and smelting around the mid-first millennium B.C., with likely trade of the product to the Mediterranean. The case for Nigerian tin at the same period—raised by Taylor in the previous volume of this Journal (1, 317–24)—is less clear, but would make sense in this context. That the same period saw the spread of iron technology in these sub-Saharan regions is doubtless more than coincidence.     

MEDIEVAL COPPER ALLOY PRODUCTION AND WEST AFRICAN BRONZE ANALYSES - PART I

The uses made of analyses of copper alloys from West Africa are critically discussed in relation to the techniques by which metal was produced in contemporary Europe and Islamic lands. The conclusions of this study are that it is likely to be very difficult to provenance the metal source, or date the artifact by composition except in the rare case of high zinc brasses. Some analyses of European copper alloys, manillas and further samples from Igbu-Ukwu are given.     

MEDIEVAL COPPER ALLOY PRODUCTION AND WEST AFRICAN BRONZE ANALYSES - PART II

The first part of this work (Craddock 1985) critically examined the uses to which analyses of West African metalwork have been put and suggested other possible significance against the background of increased knowledge of the smelting technology and alloys used in Europe and the Middle East during the last 1500 years. The second part is devoted to the composition and metalworking techniques of some of the bronzes and brasses from Nigeria and the implications for their art history.     

ENCLOSING THEIR IMMORTAL SOULS: A SURVEY OF TWO AFRICAN AMERICAN CEMETERIES IN GEORGETOWN,SOUTH CAROLINA

Abstract

A cemetery survey was completed in July of 2009 at two African American cemeteries in coastal South Carolina. The objective of this research was to study above-ground artifacts and features in the cemeteries in an effort to better understand life and death for enslaved African and African American communities as evidenced through their mortuary practices. This paper seeks to explore the relationship among African American ideologies about death, cemetery landscape, and the symbolic nature of grave goods.     

HOPE AND IMPEDIMENTS IN AFRICAN ANTHROPOLOGY

Local Cultures and Local Meanings… Theory and Practice in African Studies: The 14th Annual Conference of the Pan-African Association of Anthropologists (PAAA), 2-6 August 2004     

THE SPATIALITIES OF ACTUALLY EXISTING NEOLIBERALISM IN GLASGOW, 1977 TO PRESENT

Resisting the temptation to view the neoliberalization of urban policy as unidirectional, pure and hegemonic, this article sets out to make sense of the biography of the process in one city in particular, Glasgow. It attempts to organize, marshall and discipline existing literature on the city's local economic, planning and welfare policies, so as to offer a longitudinal reading of Glasgow's encounter with neoliberal reform across the period 1977 to the present. The article questions whether Glasgow's new political‐economic dispensation is capable of stabilizing local capitalist social relations and securing a new local growth trajectory. Space emerges as a critical part of the story. Neoliberalism has interlaced with historical structures, ideologies and policies to produce a range of new hybrid and mutant socio‐spatial formations and because it does not amount to a pure and coordinated project these socio‐spatial formations contradict and collide as often as they reinforce. Precisely because of the contingent and complicated spatialities it deposits, neoliberalism will continue to struggle to secure a regulatory framework capable of stabilizing local accumulation indefinitely.     

TORCS IN EARLY HISTORIC SCOTLAND

Summary Torcs are a prominent element in the Gododdin poem from Early Historic Scotland. This is intriguing as the archaeological evidence for torcs is much earlier. Examination of references to torcs in the poem shows that they were important status symbols worn by the entire war band. Archaeological evidence shows that gold torcs were worn in this area during the Iron Age, and in the early Roman period torcs occur on both native and Roman military sites. Some examples on Roman sites seem to be linked to the ala Petriana, an elite cavalry unit. As the poem is concerned with another elite cavalry group whose ancestors interacted with the ala Petriana the poetic prominence of torcs was probably influenced by this. Sculptural and hoard evidence confirms the use of torcs in Early Historic Scotland and reinforces both the idea of Roman influence and the link with cavalry.     

德国敲响夏日钟声

伴着夏日的微风,踏上绿荫环绕的德国,浪漫且丰富的旅程就此开启。如梦似幻的风景名胜、井井有条的街市风貌加上名品罗列的超级卖场,带上一张银联卡,德国夏日之旅一路畅通。     

NATIONALISM IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE

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