Historical Archaeology of Lavras do Abade: An Environmental Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Brazil

The Lavras do Abade research is a historical archaeological study about a gold mining village in midwestern Brazil that was destroyed by an environmental conflict at the end of the nineteenth century. This article concerns the history and archaeology of Lavras do Abade and consists of a post-disciplinary intersection of documentary and material sources about the site. In addition, only this type of reconstruction of a long-term event permits the scientific analysis of all the possible causes and consequences of this ecological contention. In this way, historical archaeology can be used to transpose a simple narrow view of the reconstruction of the past and offer insights into understanding similar unrest and group conflict today and in the future.     

Macroscopic and microbiological alterations of bird and small mammal bones buried in a Cerrado biome (south western Brazil)

In this paper, we present the results of an experimental approach developed to study the macroscopic and microbiological alteration of bird and small mammal bones buried under a Cerrado biome. The first experiment evaluated the macroscopic alteration of cooked and fresh carcasses buried through the dry and rainy seasons. The second experiment analyzed the mycobiota associated to the decomposition of a complete bird that remained buried for almost a year. Results show that in tropical forest environments: 1) bone structure and pre-taphonomic factors determine its differential alteration by biochemical processes; 2) fungal populations associated to the decomposition of animal remains depend on soil chemistry and ecological dynamics; 3) even in a corrosive environment, bird bones are more capable of surviving to several mycological decomposition steps.     

Rethinking the ‘Atlantic Forest’ of Brazil: new evidence for land cover and land value in western São Paulo, 1900–1930

Historical geographies of environmental resources need reliable biophysical baselines. In this essay, I construct a vegetation baseline for early-twentieth-century southeastern Brazil using new empirical evidence. Analysis of land subdivision court proceedings and postmortem property inventories suggests a mosaic of semideciduous mesophytic forest, subtropical savanna (Cerrado) and dense arboreal savanna (Cerradão) in western São Paulo state, Brazil. The findings support the claims of botanists and biogeographers regarding the relationship between vegetation communities and chemical–physical soil characteristics. The idea of a mosaic of early-twentieth-century vegetation also provides the basis for questioning the ‘Atlantic Forest’ supported by Warren Dean's With Broadax and Firebrand. The conclusions raise the epistemological issue of how to reconstruct biophysical baselines.     

The historical dimension of French geography

In France, the study of history behind regional geography has suffered a long decline since the late nineteenth century, but a new historical dimension is beginning to emerge. In the nineteenth century, historians showed how much regional character owed to remains from antiquity while historical geographers traced the history of exploration and discovery from ancient to modern times. Vidal de la Blache integrated historical reconstruction with social analysis in the study of regions. Vidal's followers not only characterized the distinctiveness of regional features but also demonstrated that differences in regional ways of life were more pronounced before industrialization and urbanization than later. In the first quarter of the twentieth century, historical investigations by geographers were neither sufficiently comprehensive nor sufficiently rigorous to explain spatial patterns. Historians of the Annales school obtained deeper understandings of social and economic changes and took a broader view of long-term psychological, cultural and geographical changes. Their interpretations of agrarian structures illuminated problems fundamental to the development of European civilization. In the 1970s, reacting against mechanistic analyses of spatial organization, young scholars again turned to historical geography to examine problems of social evolution. At the moment, this revival of historical interest among geographers has not attracted much attention from historians.     

The Queen – A Middle–Class Tragedy: The Writing of History and the Creation of Myths in Nineteenth–Century France and Germany

This article is an interpretation of historical narratives written by nineteenth–century German and French historians (among them Johann Gustav Droysen and Jules Michelet) about the French Revolution and the biographies of notable queens. Central to this historical narrative are Marie–Antoinette of France, Louise, queen of Prussia, and Elizabeth, empress of Austria. The text is concerned with the process of transforming the executed queen of ancien régime France into the image of the nineteenth–century bourgeois ideal of women and monarchy. Thus the essay is also about the creation of myths and about male bourgeois and middle–class fantasies.     

Historical geography and the society/nature “problematic”: the perspective of J. F. Schouw,G. P. Marsh and E. Reclus

The “retreat” of the recent past within geography to a conception of the discipline as an ahistoric science which is either spatial or ecological is seen to be an atavism—a throwback to a disciplinary framework or “problematic” which dichotomizes human society and nature into fixed exclusive categories. This essay explores an alternative “problematic” which integrates society's spatial and ecological dimensions in a study of the historical process of “dialectical” interaction between society and its geographic environment, and the political and economic consequences of this interaction. The significance of this alternative approach is elucidated through an examination of its emergence, at the time of the origins of modern geography in the early nineteenth century. Its developing importance for the present-day position of the discipline is exemplified in the work of three prominent, socially engaged, nineteenth-century geographers. Although these geographers have tended to be either ignored or misunderstood in the recent literature, their approach has much to offer the field at a time when its division into ahistoric spatial and ecological disciplines is being questioned.     

Vikings in Brazil: the Iceland Brazil Association shaping Icelandic heritage

Abstract

The Iceland Brazil Association (AISBRA) was established in 1996 by a group of Brazilians of Icelandic descent, more than 100 years after the first generation of immigrants settled in Brazil in the nineteenth century. The association was the first organisation in Brazil to collectively emphasise and celebrate Icelandic heritage. The association caters to a disparate group of people that had, in many cases, little knowledge about their historical links to Iceland. In spite of the fragmented activities of AISBRA since its establishment, the number of participants has increased, reflecting their growing interest in their Icelandic past. This paper examines how the members of Iceland Brazil Association produce their heritage independently, outside the state recognised heritage, within the Brazilian national context. We analyse how identities are re/shaped in new ways to engage with the past and how values from the past are extracted and turned into contemporary economic, social, and political values. This paper stresses heritage-making as a social imaginary used to define collective identity, which, while based on ancestry, also intersects with ideas of race and class. Representations of their Icelandic heritage allow the members of the Brazil Iceland Association to emphasise their ‘Europeanness’ and thus their associations with whiteness in contemporary post-colonial Brazil.     

Cultural networks between Portugal and Brazil: a postcolonial review

This paper aims to study notable examples of transatlantic transmissions of norms, beliefs and values that have revised the sense of a Luso-Brazilian community in a global world. The so-called Atlantic Civilization understood before as essentially Anglo-Saxon, takes a new shape when seen by the South Atlantic. If the historical relationship between Portugal and Brazil was one of colonial containment, since the nineteenth century those bilateral relations have passed through a process of reconciliation and networking – first through a mutual acceptance, then through the establishment of common international goals. On the one hand, this networking between Portugal and Brazil has occurred through public symbolic demonstration and the commemoration of a common culture; on the other hand, this networking has evolved through cultural connections – music, literature, and cinema, – all of which serve to validate a postcolonial review. Cultural connections that have survived the proverbial test of time have proven to be valuable in assessing the evolving relationship between Portugal and Brazil. Therefore, the Brazilian conscientiousness of its importance in the regional and world sphere involved the preparation of a Brazilian cultural diplomacy that recognized the political desire of diplomacy between Portugal and Brazil – a diplomacy that is largely demonstrative of the importance of soft power in a world of global networks.     

An inventory of abandoned mining exploration sites in Nunavik,Canada1

This article presents, for the first time in the literature, an inventory of abandoned mining exploration sites in Nunavik, namely the sites containing materials representing a danger to the environment and human health, to lay the foundations for a priority cleanup operation. In this article, the historical context of mining exploration in Canada first provides a backdrop for the research problem. The methodology section then examines the various techniques tested during a pilot project aimed at determining the feasibility of the project at the lowest cost. The final section presents an inventory of abandoned sites and begins an initial discussion of the potential impacts associated with these sites and some of the priority actions envisioned to mitigate these impacts.     

Re-establishment of Achaemenid History and its Development in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Iranians were aware of Sasanian history through traditional historical writings, but they knew nothing about Achaemenid history. Following European travelers to Persia from the fifteenth century, who were well prepared by reading the classical and biblical texts, Persepolis and Pasargadae were rediscovered and Achaemenid history re-established in the nineteenth century. The rise of Reza Khan to power and his grand emphasis on nationalism and ancient Iran that characterized his reign also left a deeper impact on Achaemenid studies in this period. In this paper the re-establishment of Achaemenid history and its development in nineteenth and twentieth centuries are discussed and reviewed.     

‘Our irrepressible fellow-colonist’: the biological invasion of prickly pear (Opuntia ficus-indica) in the Eastern Cape c.1890–c.1910

The paper provides an analysis of the spread of the alien prickly pear cactus (Opuntia ficus-indica) through the Eastern divisions of the Cape Colony in the latter half of the nineteenth century. It argues that biological invasions are historical processes whose trajectories are crucially shaped by the diverse and shifting cultural values attached to the invader by the invaded human society. Prickly pear underwent a gradual transformation from utility to weed as it traversed space (west to east) and time (seventeenth to nineteenth centuries), entering new natural (Karoo for Mediterranean) and economic (market for subsistence) environments more conducive to its rapid spread. Even then its definition as ‘evil’ reflected class and regional biases not shared by either the rural poor of the Eastern Cape (whether black and white) or commercial stock farmers above and west of the Winterberg–Amatola line who prized and frequently cultivated the plant for subsistence and fodder. This division and widespread non-compliance blunted official extermination efforts and left the matter unresolved by the end of the colonial period. A cultural explanation of the prickly pear invasion is contrasted with both purely biological explanations and the tendency of environmental historians to reduce such events to environmental epiphenomenon of capitalism.     

The Industrial Landscape of Rio Tinto,Huelva, Spain

Abstract

Rio Tinto has the largest deposits of pyrite and copper pyrite and associated minerals in Europe. It was exploited by the pre-Roman Iberians for silver and copper, and later by the Romans. The greatest change to the landscape came with open-pit mining or quarrying by the British Rio Tinto Company in the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century for pyrite for sulphur and copper. Even this will be obliterated by current mining projects — the Cerro Colorado project of 1973 was started by the Spanish successor company, Rio Tinto Minera (though still associated with the RTZ multi-national company), and more recently there has been an intensification of gold and silver extraction from the gossan which overlies the pyritic deposits. Damage to the industrial archaeology is also resulting from a large scale reclamation programme, and an attempt to develop a Museum Park on the site largely failed. This report briefly considers the remains at Rio Tinto, and includes photographs recording pre-1950 features of the mines.     

Sticks and Stones: Environmental Narratives and Discursive Regulation in the Forestry and Mining Sectors

As visibly extractive industries reliant on the material and semiotic commodification of nature, forestry and mining have come to be popularly viewed as "environmental pariahs." Yet forestry and mining continue to be successfully profitable enterprises despite a significant increase in environmental awareness and activism in the latter half of the twentieth century. To understand the relative stability and growth of these sectors in the face of overt contradictions arising from their use of the environment, this article revisits the work of regulation theorists who asked similar questions about the persistence and maintenance of capitalism in general.
Two case studies are presented–forestry in British Columbia and gold mining in California and Nevada–which demonstrate how the political economy of forestry and mining is subject to contradictions arising out of the technological and organizational mechanisms through which nature is appropriated during production. Analysis of the case studies shows that the regulation of these contradictions is increasingly achieved through the deployment and cooptation of sustainability narratives. The case studies therefore juxtapose the recent proliferation of sustainability narratives within the forestry and mining sectors with the sectors' persistent challenge to concepts of sustainable development.     

Archaeological Perspectives on the Ranquel Chiefdoms in the North of the Dry Pampas,in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

In this article, I present some results of the archaeological study about the cultural manifestation of the Ranquels. This Indian group occupied the north part of the province of La Pampa, Argentina, from the late eighteenth century until the end of the nineteenth century. Through a perspective that links the theoretical and methodological purposes of historical archaeology of the landscape, I analyze the settlements' distributions, the access to natural resources, the methods of circulation, and the strategies of interethnic conflict with the national army and the colonists on the border area. Taking into consideration the archaeological record and its contrast with written sources, I have defined some indicators about the process of culture change. My special interest concerns changes in nineteenth-century Ranquel material culture produced before the dissolution of the ethnic groups because of the military actions of the “desert conquest.”     

Hermoupolis: the archaeology of a Mediterranean industrial city

Abstract

Hermoupolis, on the island of Syros, developed in the nineteenth century as the first industrial city in Greece. Its historical monuments are of more than national importance, providing evidence which does not survive elsewhere of particular processes, and forming a landscape which illuminates the whole history of industrialisation.     

From Herders to Wage Laborers and Back Again: Engaging with Capitalism in the Atacama Puna Region of Northern Chile

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, indigenous Atacameño society transited from an agro-pastoralist to a more diversified capitalist-based economy due to a growing mining industry in northern Chile. The puna herders engaged in the new capitalist order as wage laborers in sulfur mines and llareta (Azorella compacta) exploitation companies. In this article we show how indigenous knowledge acted as cultural capital that enabled the herders to work as laborers. This operation led to horizontal treatment among the different agents in the taskscape that those “herder-laborers” inhabited, including those incorporated by industrial capitalism.     

HISTORY IN THE SIKH PAST1

This article offers a reading of an early eighteenth‐century Punjabi text—Gur Sobha or “The Splendor of the Guru”—as a form of historical representation, suggesting reasons for the importance of the representation of the past as history within Sikh discursive contexts. The text in question provides an account of the life, death, and teachings of the last of the ten living Sikh Gurus or teachers, Guru Gobind Singh. The article argues that the construction of history in this text is linked to the transition of the Sikh community at the death of the last living Guru whereby authority was invested in the canonical text (granth) and community (panth). As such a particular rationale for history was produced within Sikh religious thought and intellectual production around the discursive construction of the community in relation to the past and as a continuing presence. As such, the text provides an alternative to modern European forms of historical representation, while sharing some features of the “historical” as defined in that context. The essay relates this phenomenon to a broader exploration of history in South Asian contexts, to notions of historicality that are plural, and to issues particular to the intersection of history and religion. Later texts, through the middle of the nineteenth century, are briefly considered, to provide a sense of the significance of Gur Sobha within a broader, historically and religiously constituted Sikh imagination of the past.     

Masquerading Sophistication: Fancy Dress Balls of Britain's Raj

Masquerade balls were a popular form of social entertainment for the British colonial establishment in India. This article uncovers the distinguishing features of these masquerade dances from the middle eighteenth century to the late nineteenth century through an investigation of contemporary reviews and personal diaries. It explores the anti-parochial nature of masquerade dances, suggests that masquerades in the context of India were inherently transnational in scope and design, and reveals symbolic meanings inherent in masks, costumes, and ballroom decor. Ultimately, this exploration broadens our understanding of the socio-musical activities of Britain's Raj, and identifies the complex matrix of historical and cultural reference points that imbued balls with witty sophistication and displays of discriminating knowledge.     

The Implications of Analytic Philosophy of History for the Practicing Historian

An article by John O'Hagan and Elish Kelly in 2005 (see Historical Methods 38:118-25) discussed collecting information on visual artists that would allow a broad historical ranking based on "prominence." O'Hagan and Kelly collected these data to examine prominent artists' birth locations, work locations, and their consequential patterns of labor movement during several long periods. In this article, the authors examine artists' migration for four periods (based on their date of birth): Renaissance Italy, Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century, and the Western world in general for the periods 1850-99 and 1900-49. The data show that important artists clustered in all periods at a remarkably high level. Florence and Rome dominated in Renaissance Italy, with significant clustering because of the artists' birthplaces and domestic migration. Paris and London witnessed a marked clustering of artists born in the first half of the nineteenth century, with Paris continuing to dominate among artists born in the second half of the nineteenth century. Artists born in the first half of the twentieth century clustered in New York City, with all prominent American artists clustering there.