Conservation,community archaeology,and archaeological mediation at Songo Mnara,Tanzania

Abstract

During archaeological fieldwork at Songo Mnara, a UNESCO World Heritage Site on the southern Tanzanian coast, a storm caused the collapse of a graveyard’s retaining wall. The process initiated by the rebuilding of that wall serves as a case study in addressing the dialogue among researchers, community members, and national and international organizations concerning heritage. During the process of rebuilding the wall, the Village Ruins Committee was called up by the Songo Mnara villagers as a community voice to speak with external stakeholders and to access perceived opportunities to work with UNESCO for financial reward. The committee led the rescue operation at the graveyard, yet was not always recognized as part of the process of conserving the site. In describing the tensions among the hierarchy of stakeholders at Songo Mnara, we explore the benefits and contradictions of international involvement with marginalized communities who might have multiple competing interests. Our study also speaks to good archaeological practice and the ways that we must seek to do community archaeology through recognizing the efforts of local groups who need to forge their own paths to collaboration. The case of Songo Mnara is an interesting example of how international heritage agendas, local historical memory and archaeological research can intersect to strengthen community ties to, and investment in, the monuments of the past.     

Middle-range theory,behavioral archaeology,and postempiricist philosophy of science in archaeology

This paper examines middle-range theory (MRT) within processual and postprocessual archaeology. An analysis of the Binford-Schiffer dispute serves as a means of clarifying what MRT in processual archaeology is or is intended to be. Postprocessualists, despite their vigorous criticisms of MRT-based approaches, are found to rely on the same resources and types of reasoning to make their inferences. In their practice they tacitly turn to processualist middle-range principles, and so the justification of postprocessual interpretations is equivalent to that of MRT-based processualist models. If the middle range is functionally defined — a space within a research program occupied by varying theories that are taken from the body of general theory to which the program is committed and that function as background knowledge in the verification of theories — MRT bridges the epistemological gap between processual and postprocessual approaches.     

Airborne LiDAR,archaeology, and the ancient Maya landscape at Caracol,Belize

Advances in remote sensing and space-based imaging have led to an increased understanding of past settlements and landscape use, but – until now – the images in tropical regions have not been detailed enough to provide datasets that permitted the computation of digital elevation models for heavily forested and hilly terrain. The application of airborne LiDAR (light detection and ranging) remote sensing provides a detailed raster image that mimics a 3-D view (technically, it is 2.5-D) of a 200 sq km area covering the settlement of Caracol, a long-term occupied (600 BC-A.D. 250–900) Maya archaeological site in Belize, literally “seeing” though gaps in the rainforest canopy. Penetrating the encompassing jungle, LiDAR-derived images accurately portray not only the topography of the landscape, but also, structures, causeways, and agricultural terraces – even those with relatively low relief of 5–30 cm. These data demonstrate the ability of the ancient Maya to modify, radically, their landscape in order to create a sustainable urban environment. Given the time and intensive effort involved in producing traditional large-scale maps, swath mapping LiDAR is a powerful cost-efficient tool to analyze past settlement and landscape modifications in tropical regions as it covers large study areas in a relatively short time. The use of LiDAR technology, as illustrated here, will ultimately replace traditional settlement mapping in tropical rainforest environments, such as the Maya region, although ground verification will continue to be necessary to test its efficacy.     

Homelessness,poverty, and risks to health: beyond at risk categorizations of street children1

Homeless and street children are commonly portrayed in the academic and welfare literature as a prime category of ‘children at risk’. They have attracted world‐wide attention due to rising numbers in cities of the Western and developing world coupled with a discourse of childhood that ascribes risk to poor urban children unaccompanied by adults on the streets. This paper presents a critique of views about homeless and street children that rest upon an unhelpful blanket generalization of risk and, more specifically, that adopt polemical or categorical statements about homelessness as the most salient risk factor for poor health. Current research is distancing itself from a discourse that sets global characteristics for a ‘street lifestyle’, aiming instead to contextualize research on street children. Many studies have also questioned the stereotypical expectation that homeless children are the most vulnerable in deprived environments, arguing that poverty, not homelessness per se, carries the most significant risks to children's health. A risk discourse is unhelpful where it promotes a stereotype of vulnerability about children, resulting in further discrimination and social exclusion; it is most helpful when it focuses attention on ways to negotiate adverse situations. Some challenging academic and practical questions need to be raised regarding risk assumptions and risk assessment.     

Sites,sacredness, and stories: Interactions of archaeology and contemporary paganism

Folklore has, until very recently, been at the fringes of archaeological research. Post-processual archaeology has promoted plurality in interpretation, however, and archaeology more widely is required to make itself relevant to contemporary society; so, contemporary folkloric practices vis-a`-vis archaeological remains are once again receiving attention. In this paper we examine contemporary Pagan understandings of and engagements with “sacred sites” in England. Specifically, we explore how Pagan meanings are inscribed and constituted, how they draw on “traditional” understandings of sites and landscapes, and instances in which they challenge or reify the “preservation ethic” of heritage management. From active interactions with sites, such as votive offerings and instances of fire and graffiti damage, to unconventional (contrasted with academic) interpretations of sites involving wights and spirit beings, Neolithic shamans, or goddesses, there are diverse areas of contest. We argue archaeology must not reject Pagan and other folklores as “fringe,” but, in an era of community archaeology, transparency and collaboration, respond to them, preferably dialogically.     

Integrating archaeology,archaeometry and geology: local production technology and imports at Paola (Cosenza,Southern Italy)

This paper documents a comprehensive study of coarse wares for table use, serving, washing and cooking, found at the archaeological site of Paola (Cosenza, southern Italy). Major aims of the study were to group local products and imports and to determine technological features of local products. Results were obtained through a combination of archaeological (stratigraphy and ceramic typology), chemical and mineralogical–petrographical techniques (ICP-OES, ICP-MS, INAA, XRF, OM, SEM-EDS and EMPA). Data integration revealed that the coarse wares found at Paola were produced locally or imported over short (Calabria region), medium (Campania, Pantelleria, Sicily) and long distances (Greece and Africa). The local production focused on basins, stewpots, pitchers, bowls, pans, casseroles and lids, sometimes imitating African, or Pompei (Campania) or San Foca (Puglia) typical shapes. The production technology of local ceramics used a sandy–clayey blend of materials collected in the immediate vicinity of the archaeological site, fired at intermediate (about 800 °C) to low (around 650–750 °C) temperatures and used a Fe-rich clayey compound as a red ceramic coating. From a technological perspective, the Paola example arise new questions about table wares produced with clay bodies typical of cooking wares.     

The archaeology and paleoenvironment of an Upper Pleistocene hyena den: An integrated approach

Data of high resolution for reconstructions of archaeological site formation processes can be obtained only by the use of precise excavation methods and comprehensive recovery techniques using fine-mesh water screening, followed by meticulous sorting and quantitative studies of all the small organic components from the screens. These methods are generally used at human occupation sites, but are not often employed at paleontological or mixed human-carnivore sites. At the site of Bois Roche, an Upper Pleistocene hyena den, we have used these meticulous recovery techniques in combination with absolute dating, geoarchaeological observations, taphonomic analyses, studies of microvertebrates and pollen analysis. Correlation of the site environmental data from pollen and microvertebrate assemblages with the vegetation record of a deep-sea core taken in the Bay of Biscay have allowed us to constrain the ages provided by ESR dating of bovid teeth and to reconstruct the physical environment of the site with a degree of confidence rarely achieved by the use of fossil remains from archaeological sites alone.     

Innovation,diffusion, and culture contact: The holocene archaeology of Ghana

Stressing recent research, this review of Ghana archaeology highlights what we know of the advent of sedentism, agriculture, iron technology, and urbanism in Ghana and examines how certain patterns in Ghanaian prehistory depart from the expectations of the progressive evolutionary model that has framed our understanding of world prehistory. It is also argued that the archaeology of Ghana has much to contribute to current debates on the relationship between material culture and identity, and the impact of the Atlantic economy on non-European peoples, and to our understanding of cultural diversity in the past.     

Aberglasney: the theory,history and archaeology of a post-medieval landscape

Abstract

Printed and documentary sources, archaeological excavation, dendrochronology and geophysical survey are employed to investigate the history of Aberglasney, a small country house near Llandeilo, Carmarthenshire (SN 5815 2213). Traditions about its garden layout, parapet walkway, a gatehouse and a yew ‘tunnel’ are examined. Circa 1600, Bishop Anthony Rudd (1549–1614) probably built a ‘cwrt’ enclosure aligned north-south. The gatehouse belonged to this or a later house. In 1770 or later, the Dyer family rebuilt the house, probably redesigned and rewalled the entire estate layout, when an earlier farm building was converted into the parapet walkway and stock pens, in an area later known as the ‘cloistered court’. In Victorian times this feature, originally a farmyard, became a pleasure garden, part of a typical Georgian-Victorian complex including a kitchen garden, glasshouses, orchards and fishpond. A yew grove was established, most likely c. 1805, when the Philipps family began planting in a Picturesque style. Abandoned c. 1950, house and garden became dilapidated. The site is now the object of a radical development programme, involving inter alia the stabilization of all buildings fabric, and imposing 16th-/17th-century style formal gardens over the 18th-/19th-century kitchen garden and orchard.     

The archaeology of scattered wreck-sites: formation processes and shallow water archaeology in western Lake Huron

This paper explores the application of archaeological site formation theory to stranded wooden vessels and the scattered wreck-sites they produce. Shallow water wrecks and wreckage sites in the Au Sable Shores region of western Lake Huron are used to develop a preliminary classification of the processes operating on the breakup and deposition of wooden vessels.     

Churchwarden Clay Tobacco-Pipes and the Southorn Pipemaking Family of Broseley,Shropshire

Abstract

The origin of the term ‘Churchwarden pipe’, now used to describe any long-stemmed clay—and sometimes even brier—pipe, is examined and the suggestion made that it was originally invented by the prominent Broseley, Shropshire, clay pipemaking family of Southorn to describe a specific type among their long-stemmed pipes. The Southorn family, whose products were possibly the premier-quality British clay pipes of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, is also discussed in the light of available evidence, much of which is confused or contradictory.     

Time perspectives,palimpsests and the archaeology of time

This paper explores the meaning of time perspectivism, its relationship to other theories of time used in archaeological interpretation, and the ways in which it can be implemented through an analysis of the palimpsest nature of the material world we inhabit. Palimpsests are shown to be a universal phenomenon of the material world, and to form a series of overlapping categories, which vary according to their geographical scale, temporal resolution and completeness of preservation. Archaeological examples are used to show how different types of palimpsest can be analyzed to address different sorts of questions about the time dimension of human experience, and the relationship between different types of processes and different scales of phenomena. Objections to the apparently deterministic and asocial character of time perspectivism, and its apparent neglect of subjective experience and individual action and perception, are dealt with. The line of thinking developed here is used, in its turn, to critique other approaches to the archaeology of time, and conventional understandings of the relationship between past, present and future.     

The 1911 International Exposition in Rome: architecture, archaeology, and national identity

This paper discusses the 1911 International Exposition in Rome and illustrates how this patriotic celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Italian Sate utilized symbolic landscapes of architecture and archaeology to promote nationalist sentiments of italianità and romanità centered on the young capital of Rome. Through modern art exhibitions at the Valle Giulia, scientific conferences at the Castel Sant’Angelo, archaeological exhibits on the Roman Empire in the Baths of Diocletian, and regional Italian pavilions in the Piazza d’Armi, exposition officials offered a complex representation of Italian national identity that was modern yet ancient, cosmopolitan yet bucolic, European yet regional, and imperial yet developing.