The origins of two purportedly pre-Columbian Mexican crystal skulls

The well-known life-size rock crystal skull in the British Museum was purchased in 1897 as an example of genuine pre-Columbian workmanship, but its authenticity has been the subject of increasing speculation since the 1930s. This paper is concerned with the history, technology and material of the skull and another larger white quartz skull, donated recently to the Smithsonian Institution. Manufacturing techniques were investigated, using scanning electron microscopy to examine tool marks on the artefacts, and compared with Mesoamerican material from secure contexts. A Mixtec rock crystal goblet and a group of Aztec/Mixtec rock crystal beads show no evidence of lapidary wheels. They were probably worked with stone and wood tools charged with abrasives, some of which may have been as hard as corundum. Textual evidence for Mexican lapidary techniques during the early colonial period, supported by limited archaeological evidence, also indicates a technology without the wheel, probably based on natural tool materials. In contrast, the two skulls under consideration were carved with rotary wheels. The British Museum skull was worked with hard abrasives such as corundum or diamond, whereas X-ray diffraction revealed traces of carborundum (SiC), a hard modern synthetic abrasive, on the Smithsonian skull. Investigation of fluid and solid inclusions in the quartz of the British Museum skull, using microscopy and Raman spectroscopy, shows that the material formed in a mesothermal metamorphic environment equivalent to greenschist facies. This suggests that the quartz was obtained from Brazil or Madagascar, areas far outside pre-Columbian trade networks. Recent archival research revealed that the British Museum skull was rejected as a modern artefact by the Museo Nacional de Mexico in 1885, when offered for sale by the collector and dealer, Eugène Boban. These findings led to the conclusion that the British Museum skull was worked in Europe during the nineteenth century. The Smithsonian Institution skull was probably manufactured shortly before it was bought in Mexico City in 1960; large blocks of white quartz would have been available from deposits in Mexico and the USA.     

A radiological and histological investigation into the mummification of cats from Ancient Egypt

An examination has been carried out on a series of wrapped mummified cats from Ancient Egypt that are held in the British Museum (Natural History). The cats, which were unprovenanced and undated, were presented by Sir Flinders Petrie at the beginning of this century, but they were not registered in the collections and have never been described. Radiocarbon dates have now been obtained for two of the cats and radiographs have been taken of each one to establish its identification and age at death. Attempts were made to reconstitute the skin tissue and samples of hair were studied by electron microscopy.     

Reviews

H enri D esroche : The Sociology of Hope.
D aniel W. P atterson : The Shaker Spiritual.
I iro K ajanto : Classical and Christian; Studies in the Latin Epitaphs of Medieval and Renaissance Rome.
M ark R. C ohen : Jewish Self-Government in Medieval Egypt: The Origins of the Office of Head of the Jews ca. 1065–1126.
J effrey R ichards : Consul of God: The Life and Times of Gregory the Great.
P aul L awrence R ose : Bodin and the Great God of Nature: The Moral and Religious Universe of a Judaiser.
P aul L awrence R ose (ed.): Jean Bodin: Selected Writings on Philosophy, Religion, and Politics.
J oyce O ldham A ppleby : Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth Century England.
J. A. S harpe : Defamation and Sexual Slander in Early Modern England: The Church Courts at York (Borthwick Papers, No. 58).
K enneth M. B oyd : Scottish Church Attitudes to Sex, Marriage and the Family, 1850–1914.
P aul M c H ugh : Prostitution and Victorian Social Reform.
E dmund C ampion : John Henry Newman: Friends, Allies, Bishops, Catholics.
N. M errill D istad : Guessing at Truth: The Life of Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) Shepherdstown
A lan D. G ilbert : The Making of Post-Christian Britain: A History of the Secularization of Modern Society.
A nn -M ari J ordens : The Stenhouse Circle: Literary Life in Mid-Nineteenth Century Sydney.
B rian K ennedy : Silver, Sin, and Sixpenny Ale: A Social History of Broken Hill, 1883–1921.
I an B reward : Grace and Truth: A History of the Theological Hall, Knox College, Dunedin 1876–1975.     

Anthropology and the British Museum: A conversation with John Mack

John Mack is Keeper of Ethnography at the British Museum, and until recently was also Senior Keeper. He curated The Museum of the Mind: Art and Memory in World Cultures as part of the British Museum's 250th anniversary programme. Major changes have taken place at the museum, including the return of the Museum of Mankind to the British Museum's Bloomsbury site. This site will by next year also house the Anthropology Library, one of the largest anthropology libraries in the world, the holdings of which were greatly enhanced by the gift of the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI) Library to the British Museum Ethnography Department Library in 1976. John Mack can be contacted at J.Mack@british-museum.ac.uk .     

Pillars and perspective: demarcation of the Belgian Congo–Northern Rhodesia boundary

From 1911 to 1914 an Anglo-Belgian boundary commission demarcated the 885 km boundary between the Belgian Congo and Northern Rhodesia along the watershed of the Congo and Zambezi rivers with a total of just 46 markers. Such low-density boundary demarcation with widely spaced pillars was typical of early British boundary-making in southern Africa. Less than fifteen years later, a second Anglo-Belgian boundary commission was created to re-demarcate the boundary. Not only was it unique for a colonial boundary in southern Africa to be re-demarcated, this second Anglo-Belgian boundary commission worked for six years with a budget that exceeded any previous British boundary commission in colonial Africa. This commission marked the Belgian Congo–Northern Rhodesia boundary on the ground with nearly five times the number of pillars as the first commission, literally etching the boundary in the African landscape. Its techniques of survey and boundary demarcation set a new standard, serving as a model for later British colonial boundary commissions and influencing boundary-making theory through the present day.     

Taphonomy of Micromammals from Cave Deposits at Kabwe (Broken Hill) and Twin Rivers in Central Zambia

Samples of Middle Pleistocene micromammals from cave deposits at Kabwe (Broken Hill) and Twin Rivers in Zambia were analysed according to Andrews's (1990) methods. In addition, behavioural and ecological data relating to possible predator species were examined for corrobation or contradiction of the mechanical evidence. Interpretation of the Kabwe sample is complicated by its unknown history since recovery and the possibility that the paucity of cranial remains results from their selective post-recovery removal from the sample. However, the combined evidence suggests that it was collected by barn owls whereas the Twin Rivers material perhaps accumulated at a spotted eagle owl nest site.     

REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:
Lay Taxes in England and Wales 1188–1688. By M. Jurkowski, C. L. Smith and D. Crook.
Images of Rule. Art and Politics in the English Renaissance, 1485–1649. By David Howarth.
Inventing a Republic. The Political Culture of the English Commonwealth, 1649–1653. By Sean Kelsey.
Tudor Government. Structures of Authority in the Sixteenth Century. By David Loades.
The History of the Reign of King Henry VII and Selected Works. By Francis Bacon. Edited by Brian Vickers.
The English Levellers. Edited by Andrew Sharp.
Peerage Creations 1649–1800. A Chronological List of Creations in the Peerages of England and Great Britain. Compiled by J. C. Sainty.
Officials of the Royal Household, 1660–1837. Part 2: Departments of the Lord Steward and the Master of the Horse. Compiled by J. C. Sainty and R. O. Bucholz.
The Early Parties and Politics in Britain, 1688–1832. By Brian Hill.
Divided Loyalties, The Question of the Oath for Irish Catholics in the Eighteenth Century. By Patrick Fagan.
Maps of the Mediterranean Regions. Published in British Parliamentary Papers 1801–1921. By Susan Gole.
Print Politics. The Press and Radical Opposition in Early Nineteenth-Century England. By Kevin Gilmartin.
Gladstone. Edited by Peter J. Jagger.
The Mid-Victorian Generation 1846–1886. By K. Theodore Hoppen.
Benjamin Disraeli Letters. Volume Six, 1852–1856. Edited by M. G. Wiebe, Mary S. Millar and Ann P. Robson.
Irish Home Rule 1867–1921. By Alan O'Day.
Facing Fascism. The Conservative Party and the European Dictators, 1935–1940. By N. J. Crowson.     

Private Life Dramas? Sexuality,Regulation and Social Identities

Lawrence Stone, Broken Lives: Separation and Divorce in England, 1680–1857 A. James Hammerton, Cruelty and Companionship: Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Married Life Diana Jeater, Marriage, Perversion and Power: The Construction of Moral Discourse in Southern Rhodesia, 1894–1930 Karen Dubinsky, Improper Advances: Rape and Heterosexual Conflict in Ontario, 1880–1928     

BOOK REVIEWS

The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America.
The Making of a Hinterland: State, Society, and Economy in Inland North China, 1853–1937.
A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II.
Peter Lombard.
Merchant Capital and Economic Decolonization: The United Africa Company 1929–1987.
A History of Christianity in Africa: From Antiquity to the Present.
Carthage, A History.
From Civilization to Segregation: Social ldeals and Social Control in Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1934
The Movement and the Sixties: Protest in America from Greensboro to Wounded Knee.
Better in Darkness: A Biography of Henry Adams, His Second Lqe, 1862–1891.     

‘A Sordid Tussle on the Strand’: Rhodesia House during the UDI Rebellion (1965–80)

Under the 1961 constitution, Rhodesia floated in a constitutional netherworld somewhere between a dominion and a colony. As Rhodesia's primary institutional link to the mother country, it was in the struggles over the status of their High Commission, Rhodesia House, that larger constitutional issues would be contested in microcosm. After UDI, Britain's awkward and unpopular policies towards the illegal regime in Africa were reflected in its policies regarding the London building and its occupants. The regime viewed Rhodesia House as a vital link to the outside world and sought to use it as a base from which to break out of its international isolation. The British shut down Rhodesia House in 1969, but its symbolic importance did not go away and it remained an important protest venue for demonstrators of all stripes. This article explores the significance of Rhodesia House during the fifteen-year rebellion and analyses what the controversies that swirled around the building say about the British imperial constitutional structure, the illegal regime's foreign policy goals and Britain's policy towards Rhodesia during this long and bizarre rebellion.     

Assessing the reliability of criteria used to identify postcranial bones in sheep, Ovis, and goats, Capra

Criteria developed to distinguish between selected postcranial elements of sheep and goats are evaluated using modern specimens from the collections of the Field Museum of Natural History, the National Museum of Natural History, and the Museum of Anthropology and the Museum of Zoology, University of Michigan. Elements considered are: the distal humerus, proximal and distal radius, distal tibia, distal metapodials, astragalus, calcaneus, and the first and second phalanx. This evaluation includes an assessment of 1385 elements from 49 goat and 84 modern sheep skeletons. It also includes a blind test on elements drawn from 20 specimens taken by six analysts with differing levels of experience. Overall, the criteria evaluated are highly reliable, especially in goats and only slightly less so in sheep. A major exception is the distal tibia, where diagnostic criteria tested proved substantially less reliable than other criteria evaluated here. Strongly positive results were also obtained when the sample was partitioned by sex, domestic status, and age. Results of the blind test show some variability depending on the level of experience of the analyst, underscoring the need for training and access to adequate modern reference collections before attempting to apply these criteria to archaeological assemblages. The results of this assessment stand in stark contrast to those obtained in an earlier assessment of the reliability of criteria used to distinguish between mandibles and mandibular teeth of sheep and goats. In all but a few teeth, dental criteria proved to be much less reliable, especially in goats. They were also significantly less reliable in the identification of both younger and older animals. Unlike dental criteria, there are no biases introduced by variable reliability of postcranial criteria that distort taxon-specific harvest profiles based on long-bones.     

Business and British Decolonisation: Sir Ronald Prain,the Mining Industry and the Central African Federation

One of the most intractable challenges to emerge during British decolonisation was the need to reconcile the competing political aspirations of settler and African populations in Central Africa. During the 1950s Britain sought to construct a ‘multiracial’ Central African Federation, financed largely by Northern Rhodesia's copper industry. Of the two major mining groups involved, the Rhodesian Selection Trust, under the chairmanship of Sir Ronald Prain, arguably played an important and unusual role in the Federation's politics and eventual demise. Having supported the Federation at its inception, Prain quickly reassessed the Federal project and concluded that its expected benefits had failed to materialise, and that a new political orientation was necessary for Northern Rhodesia, his companies' host country. Whereas expatriate business interests were often ‘weak’ political actors during decolonisation, Prain, through pragmatic readjustment, evolved a forward-thinking strategy of accommodation to the rise of African nationalism, and to the corresponding eclipse of settler power. Adapting with unusual success to political change, he became actively involved in the political developments which led to Zambian independence in 1964.     

The Declaration of Independence: A Global History

Twenty years after the publication of John MacKenzie's Empire of Nature, his characterisation of sport hunting tourism as a symbol of elite and imperial privilege remains strong. Using the example of two white hunters from New Zealand and their trip to Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) in 1926, this article elaborates upon MacKenzie's brief mention of hunters in Africa from cultures other than Britain. In particular, the article argues that ‘home’ hunting cultures—in this case of New Zealand—need to be considered thoroughly when examining meanings of hunting tourism, and, second, that hunting trips could serve a range of purposes beyond the notion of reinforcing colonial rule.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
Noel Weeks, The Biography of Ancient Israel: National Narratives in the Bible
David G. Horrell, Asceticism and the New Testament
William Klassen, Pontius Pilate in History and Interpretation
Rick Strelan, The Religion of Paul the Apostle
Ruth E. Leader, The Barbarian Plain: Saint Sergius Between Rome and Iran
Anthony Grafton, Investigations into Magic
Conal Condren, The English Sermon Revised: Religion, Literature and History, 1600–1750
Mary Chan, Catholicism and Anti-Catholicism in Early Modern English Texts
Tim Cooper, Providence in Early Modern England
Paul Turnbull, The Enlightenments of Edward Gibbon, 1737–1764
Paul Turnbull, Barbarism and Religion. Vol. 2, Narratives of Civil Government
Martyn Lyons, Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century France. Vol. 1, The Clerical Establishment and its Social Ramifications
Martyn Lyons, Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century France. Vol. 2, The Religion of the People and the Politics of Religion
John Gascoigne, The Modern Papacy Since 1789
Mark Smith, Politicians in the Pulpit: Christian Radicalism in Britain from the Fall of the Bastille to the Disintegration of Chartism
Mark Smith, The Diocesan Revival in the Church of England, c. 1800–1870
D. W. Bebbington, Hugh Price Hughes: Founder of a New Methodism, Conscience of a New Nonconformity
Mark Smith, Anglican Ritualism in Victorian Britain
William W. Emilsen, In the Shadow of the Mahatma: Bishop V. S. Azariah and the Travails of Christianity in British India
Jim Masselos, Ashes of Immortality: Widow-Burning in India
Giselle M. Byrnes, The Island Broken in Two Halves: Land and Renewal Movements Among the Maori of New Zealand     

A temporal bone lesion in a modern subject to explain a defect in the Kabwe skull

The skull of a dissection room subject was noted to have a hole in the left squamous temporal bone similar to a lesion in the Kabwe (Broken Hill) skull. Kabwe man has an 8 × 8 mm hole situated 2 cm above and slightly anterior to the left external auditory meatus (EAM). This report describes a possible mechanism for the causation of that lesion, which is illustrated by features on a modern skull. The subject is a 55-year-old man who died from carcinoma of the stomach in 1942. The skull was macerated, defatted and stored after the cadaver had been dissected by medical students. In the squamous temporal bone there was an oval shaped 9 × 8 mm hole. The base of the oval was situated 11 mm above the superior margin of the EAM with the central axis of the hole being in line with the anterior margin of the EAM. This hole forms the base of a larger intracranial pit measuring 21 mm in diameter. The hole has an irregular margin except superiorly where it is smooth and rounded, indicative of healing. Intracranially, the petrous temporal bone displayed a marked exophytic, bony outgrowth suggestive of a chronic infective condition. The tegmen tympani contained a hole 3 mm in diameter in the middle of the exophytic area. No sign of disease in the mastoid process was noted. These findings are compatible with advanced chronic ear disease which has tracked into the extradural space through the tegmen tympani, become loculated, and then eroded the squamous temporal bone. The Kabwe skull shows signs compatible with chronic ear disease. It is suggested that a mechanism similar to the one described in the modern skull could explain the lesion in the left squamous temporal bone of Kabwe man.     

REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: Linda Ellanna, Peter Loveday, Owen Stanley and Elspeth Young, with the assistance of Ian White Economic Enterprise in Aboriginal Communities in the Northern Territory Arid Shrubland Plants of Western Australia, University of Western Australia The Richest Lode, Broken Hill 1883–1988, Sydney, Hale and Iremonger Aborigines, Tourism, and Development the Northern Territory Experience, Darwin Contemporary Australia- explorations in economy, society and geography, Melbourne Jane Hirst, John Overton, Bryant Allen and Yvonne Byron (eds). Small-scale Agriculture, Canberra     

Voorwoord/Foreword

Abstract

When the Rhodesian Front Party under Prime Minister lan Smith declared unilateral independence (UDI) from Britain on November 11 1965, the international community responded by imposing economic sanctions against the rebel regime. At the time, the British prime minister, Harold Wilson was convinced that given the smallness and the fragility of the Rhodesian economy, international economic sanctions would quickly bring Rhodesia to its knees. Sanctions did not succeed, in the short run, in bringing the Rhodesian economy to its knees, however, partly because South Africa and Portugal refused to participate in sanctions and helped Rhodesia circumvent sanctions. This study examines South Africa's economic support for Rhodesia in the early years of Rhodesia's unilateral declaration of independence. It argues that South Africans defied international opinion over the Rhodesian question partly because of the widespread sympathy for their kith and kin across the border that were fighting the same battle against black nationalism as the South African ruling party, but also because of South Africa's need to protect and promote national interests through a demonstration of the inefficacy of international sanctions and boycotts at a time when it was, itself, a possible target for international sanctions because of its apartheid system.     

Rapin,Hume and the identity of the historian in eighteenth century England

Paul de Rapin-Thoyras's History of England (1725–1731) has hitherto occupied a marginal position in most accounts of eighteenth-century historiography, despite its considerable readership and influence. This paper charts the publication history of the work, its politics and style, and the methods through which Rapin's British translators and booksellers successfully proposed the work as the model for new historical enquiry, and its author as the model for a modern historical writer. It is further argued that David Hume's writings and letters relating to his History of England (1754–1763) suggest a direct and critical engagement with Rapin's work, and with the identity of the historian, as it had been constructed through Rapin's success. By focussing on the mechanisms of production and circulation, and the impact which these had on the practice of historical writing in the eighteenth century, the paper aims to demonstrate the value of applying social–historical methods to the study of historical writing.     

National Policy for Nautical Archaeology—initial proposals for the United Kingdom

This document arose out of discussions between Council for British Archaeology (Committee for Nautical Archaeology) and the Nautical Archaeology Society in the summer of 1987. Officials of the Nutional Maritime Museum were brought into the discussions in the autumn, as was the Institute of Field Archaeologists (Maritime Affairs Group). The working group wish to continue the discussion among a wider range of opinion and welcome comment via: Mr R. Yorke, NAS Chairman, 'Silver Birches', Bashurst Hill, Ichingfield, West Sussex RH13 7NY, UK.     

A seventeenth-century trade gun and associated collection from Pine Island,Alabama

A set of artifacts, apparently associated with human remains (one tooth), from Pine Island, Alabama, was donated to the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History in 1915. In preparation for repatriation, this collection was investigated extensively by a volunteer team. This paper reports the results of this analysis, focusing especially on a new type of trade gun and the glass beads. The goal of the research is to provide an accurate date for the collection to assist in identifying the Native American group represented.