Frozen ground in the sub‐arctic region and its biological significance

Abstract

Climate change is increasingly discussed in apocalyptic terms, a spectre-invoking crisis discourse that simultaneously legitimises society-wide action, while de-politicising this very political issue. This paper examines the depoliticisation of climate change adaptation in Kenya, a country which has been recently praised as a developing country with a progressive adaptation policy. Using examples from fieldwork in Kenya, it focusses on Kenya's recently adopted National Climate Change Response Strategy (NCCRS), and argues that Kenya's adaptation discourse is driven by particular imaginaries, specifically: adaptation as a ‘universal apocalypse’, and adaptation as a technical-economic problem. These function as deliberate anti-political strategies, aimed at obscuring the highly charged realities of adaptation. For Kenya's current political elite adaptation is predominantly a matter of reducing the perceived risks to economic growth, and enhancing opportunities to gain revenue from international funding sources. This is achieved through a discursive construction of a particular vision of adaptation, and against a backdrop of a capitalist strategy for growth. The paper concludes that a critical and political interpretation of the NCCRS and similar adaptation strategies is necessary to keep equity and justice at the centre of the climate debate, and to dispel the myth of adaptation policy making as a rational and disinterested process.     

Pastoralist iron production on the Laikipia Plateau, Kenya: wider implications for archaeometallurgical studies

Recent research conducted on the Laikipia Plateau in Kenya highlighted several shortfalls in the existing models for understanding and interpreting past iron production technologies. The research was undertaken in order to assess variability in past pastoralist iron production techniques – the first such archaeometallurgical exploration in the region. In all, seven furnaces and one iron production refuse area were excavated across two discrete sites separated by only 3 km: Mili Sita and Cattle Dip, both dating to the second half of the second millennium AD. The recovered archaeometallurgical materials – slag, furnace wall, and tuyères – were analysed using a combination of optical microscopy, SEM-EDS and ED-XRF.The results revealed that the technologies in question were complex and sophisticated, and their reconstruction and interpretation required some special considerations. The exploitation of titania-rich black sand was observed to bear a major influence on the resulting slag compositions at both sites, and use of these specific materials resulted in consistently efficient smelting episodes, demonstrating the technical competence and skill of the past smelters. However, although the slag compositions and microstructures of all the samples were markedly similar between the two sites, striking stylistic variation was apparent in the furnace design. This raised questions not only about the organisation and identity of the smelters who were working in this area at this time, but also of the reliability of assuming that similar slag compositions – peculiar as these might be – reflect similar technological (or sociotechnical) systems (cf. Pfaffenberger, 1992). A further problem encountered was that the consequently ulvite-rich slag was comprised of five, not three, major constituents – titania and lime in addition to iron oxide, alumina and silica. This meant that the operating parameters of these smelting episodes could not be easily interpreted using the usual models, which tend to be based around the assumption of fayalitic slag.As such, this paper will discuss to what extent consistency in technological style, in a broad, sociocultural sense, can be inferred through slag analysis, as well as the need for the formulation of wider reaching models that encompass the full scope of technical variation in iron production.     

The Fauna from Ele Bor: Evidence for the Persistence of Foragers into the Later Holocene of Arid North Kenya

This paper reports on the results of zooarchaeological analysis of fauna from two stratified rockshelters at Ele Bor, 200 km east of Lake Turkana, Kenya. Ele Bor Site A, with radiocarbon determinations from 7000 to 1000 B P, yielded around 4000 identifiable bone specimens. The other site, Ele Bor M, yielded only a hundred bone specimens and will be discussed less extensively in this paper. Fauna from the EBA, although heavily modified by various taphonomic agents, testify to the strong continuity of a broad-based foraging pattern into the first millennium AD, the long stability of human use of a broad range of wild vertebrate species and to a stone-working tradition, augmented but not substantially modified by the introduction of ceramics and grinding equipment during the sixth to third millennium BC.Cette article présent des résultats de 1'analyses zooarquéologiques du faune de deux abris stratifiés à Ele Bor, situé 200 km à 1'est du Lac Turkana dans Kenya. Ele Bor Site A, avec datations du radiocarbon du 7000–1000 ans B.P., provient dans 1'environ de 4000 pièces identifiqués, et le de Ele Bor M, 100 pièces identifiques. Le faune de Ele Bor A, bien que modifiés par diverses processes taphonomiques, testifié à un continuité assez fort de subsistence bassé des especies vertébres indigènes, typiques d'environnements secs. Il n'ya pas d'évidences de adoptation de especies domestique, ni des plantes ni des animaux, jusqu'a 1'ultime millenaire avant présent.     

Recent Research in Paleoethnobotany

This article discusses paleoethnobotanical research and results presented in the recent literature. Although archaeobotany is a fairly recent addition to the study of the past, it now encompasses a diverse range of techniques, analyses, and new results. Issues that are prominent in this archaeological subdiscipline include the origins of agriculture, resource use, environmental reconstruction, anthropogenic environmental change, political-economic change, plant cultivation and crop production, plant processing, consumption (diet), and site deposition. Some of the plant identification methods for macrobotanical remains include morphology using light microscopes, histology with the scanning electron microscope, and statistics. The study of microbotanical remains has expanded greatly and now includes pollen, phytolith, chemical, and molecular analyses.     

Implications of Plant Remains from the East Face of Monks Mound

Abstract

Flotation-recovered plant remains from a series of 11 sod block samples, 7 features, a limestone concentration, and a mass of organic debris provide insights into the construction of Monks Mound. The presence of uncarbonized seeds exclusively of annuals (other than those of perennial elderberry and wild grape, which probably represent food remains) indicates that the construction of Monks Mound was relatively continuous. The presence of quillwort megaspores and other indicators of wetlands provide additional data on how Monks Mound was constructed and where some borrow and/or sod blocks were likely obtained to construct at least part of this monument.     

Flotation versus dry sieving archaeobotanical remains: A case history from the Middle Horizon southern coast of Peru

Abstract

During excavations at the site of Casa Vieja located in the Peruvian coastal desert, archaeological plant remains were systematically collected to assess whether it is more productive and informative to sieve sandy sediments in dry environments or to process such samples by water flotation, a persistent methodological concern. At Casa Vieja, dual subsamples were collected and analyzed using both of these procedures. For dry, sandy sediment conditions, each processing strategy was found to yield a different view of the botanical remains. Dry sieving recovers more of the larger plant specimens whereas water flotation yields more of the smaller-sized material. These results should be incorporated into archaeological research designs in the future, especially for desert environments.     

Re-placing imperial landscapes: colonial monuments and the transition to independence in Kenya

Public monuments in colonial Nairobi were visual links to the British empire, and served as a means of asserting imperial power. During this period, colonial memories and identities were inscribed into Nairobi’s landscape by the dominant group, the elite of the European population. However, at the moment of Kenya’s achievement of independence from colonial rule, such identities and assertions of power were challenged as statues were removed from the city. This paper examines the forces behind the decolonisation of Nairobi’s monumental landscape and how this landscape visualised the changing political and cultural contexts of the city. Comparisons are made with the removal of statues from Sudan, India and the Democratic Republic of Congo in order to situate the Kenyan experience. Through a comparative examination of the decolonisation of Nairobi’s monumental landscape, this paper illustrates how the removal of public monuments from the city was exploited by both the coloniser and the colonised.     

A palynological investigation of a second millennium BC bank-system in the black moss of Achnacree

Evidence of agricultural activity in Scotland during the Bronze Age is sparse. A bank system of that date, covered by a deep peat accumulation, in Argyllshire, Scotland has preserved a podzolic palaeosol. Palynological investigation of the palaeosol allows a consideration of potential prehistoric land use. The existence of a well developed iron pan in the palaeosol divides the soil pollen into two contrasting groups, suggesting two quite distinctive periods of land use. Also discussed are the problems which the processes of podzolization cause pollen analysts, the dating of buried soils and the possibility of periodicity in pollen movement through a soil.     

Tourism–conservation enterprises as a land-use strategy in Kenya

Since the early 1990s, nature conservation organizations in Eastern and Southern Africa have increasingly attempted to integrate their objectives with those of international development organizations, the land-use objectives of local communities and the commercial objectives of tourism businesses, in order to find new solutions for the protection of nature and wildlife outside state-protected areas. The increased inclusion of the market in conservation initiatives has led to diverse institutional arrangements involving various societal actors, such as private game reserves, conservancies and conservation enterprises. The Koija Starbeds ecolodge in Kenya – a partnership between communities, private investors and a non-governmental organization – serves as a case study for emerging institutional arrangements aimed at enabling value creation for communities from nature conservation. Based on a content analysis of data from individual semi-structured interviews and focus group interviews, as well as a document and literature review, this article reveals a range of benefits for community livelihood and conservation. It also identifies a range of longer term governance challenges, such as the need to address local political struggles, the relations between partners and transparency and accountability in the arrangement.     

Trade or Trash: an examination of the archaeobotanical remains from the Byzantine harbour at Caesarea Maritima,Israel

A rich collection of waterlogged plant‐remains was recovered from the harbour at Caesarea Maritima, Israel. These remains were identified and represent several varieties of fruit, nut, cereal crop, crop by‐product and weed species. The two areas where remains were recovered provided assemblages that were different in composition. Trade or trash are the two interpretations discussed. In either case, however, the information derived from the assemblage is of archaeological importance, as the species present can aid in economic, dietary and trade reconstructions. © 2010 The Author     

Whose hearts and minds? A gift perspective on the US military's aid projects in Eastern Africa

Today, the US military is frequently involved in the field of reconstruction and development. In Eastern Africa, personnel of the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa has carried out hundreds of small projects, ranging from veterinary support, medical clinics for local populations to the construction and repair of schools and health centres. Although these civil affairs operations constitute only a small part of the wider US military activity on the continent, they play a significant role in the US military's post-counterinsurgency emphasis on stability operations. However, critical scholarship has paid little attention to this type of military practice, let alone the dynamics of giving and taking for the targeted beneficiaries.This article draws conceptually on perspectives of the gift and empirically on visits to project sites in Uganda and Kenya that received assistance by US civil affairs teams in order to explore how recipients engage the gift-bearing donor. By understanding aid projects as social relations that are characterized by hierarchy and efforts of reciprocity, gift perspectives help us to make tensions and contradictions in these encounters visible. While the relationship is one of inequality, these interventions are mediated. Local brokers have a significant role in negotiating and translating priorities of the civil affairs teams on the one hand and the needs of local recipients on the other.     

Living on the Edge? Transformation of a Marginal Pleistocene Landscape Into a Settlement Area in the Northeastern Part of the Netherlands

ABSTRACT

This paper will examine settlement location during the Iron Age in the northeast part of the Netherlands, an area shaped by Pleistocene geology. In recent years, a number of Late Iron Age/Early Roman settlements situated on the low lying slopes of sand ridges and nearby stream ridges revealed traces of an earlier Iron Age occupation. Palynological data revealed that this part of the landscape was used by humans before it was transformed into an area of settlement. An analysis of excavation data from two key sites at Denekamp-De Borchert and Groningen-Helpermaar, as well as other known sites, lead to the conclusion that the transformation of ‘peripheral landscapes’ into permanent settlement locations was preceded by a phase of arable cultivation which left no trace of permanent habitation. It is also suggested that the impact of human behaviour on the natural landscape in the Early and Middle Iron Age was much bigger than previously anticipated. When excavating this type of settlement areas dating to the Late Iron Age, archaeologists must be aware that only of a small group of archaeological features exist. The proposed model for the choice of settlement location may be more widespread, because of similarities in landscape between the study area presented here and other landscapes in Northwest-Europe (e.g. parts of Germany and Denmark).     

Provenance of Coals Recovered from the Wreck of HMAV Bounty

Coal samples from HMAV Bounty were analysed using standard techniques to shed light on their provenance. Petrographic analysis indicated they were Carboniferous, with high vitrinite and liptinite content and a mean random reflectance of vitrinite of 0.99%. Palynological analysis indicated the samples were derived from the Middle Coal Measures, Westphalian B. Combining coal rank (vitrinite reflectance), age, knowledge of seam distributions and coalfield history indicates the most like source to be the Durham Coalfield, possibly the Hutton or Low Main Seams. These coals were mined along the valley of the Weir in the latter part of the 18th century.
© 2007 The Authors