Bioarchaeology: The Lives and Lifestyles of Past People

Skeletons represent the most direct evidence of the biology of past populations, and their study provides insight into health and well-being, dietary history, lifestyle (activity), violence and trauma, ancestry, and demography. These areas help inform our understanding of a range of issues, such as the causes and consequences of adaptive shifts in the past (e.g., foraging to farming, sedentarism), the biological impact of invasion and colonization, differential access to food and other resources (e.g., by gender or status), and conflict and warfare. Central to bioarchaeological inquiry are the interaction between biology and behavior and the role of environment on health and lifestyle. Bioarchaeological analysis has traditionally focused on local settings. However, important perspective on general questions of human adaptation is possible both regionally and globally.     

Herbert Butterfield, the English School and the Civilizing Virtues of Diplomacy

This article seeks to establish the elements of a diplomatic theory of international relations and argues that this is implicit in the works of Herbert Butterfield on international relations, historiography, diplomatic history and Christian ethics. As a founding member of the British Committee on the Theory of International Politics, Butterfield shared with his colleagues the conviction that diplomacy and diplomatic systems lie at the heart of what happens, might happen and ought to happen in international relations. Like his colleagues, however, he failed to produce a work on diplomacy that attracted the sort of attention garnered by their work in other areas, for example on international systems and societies. Indeed, his own theoretical work on diplomacy is often regarded as a blind alley exhibiting nostalgia for the 'old diplomacy' of eighteenth-century Europe or a fatal attraction towards the more scientistic elements of political realism. It is argued, however, that in the broader corpus of Butterfield's work there is to be found a theory of diplomacy advocating self-restraint and charity towards others based upon recognizing both our common humanity and the impossibility of achieving a full understanding of one another. For Butterfield, this would have been a theory applied to states; but, employing one of Butterfield's own techniques for interrogating dead historians, it is argued that this holds up as a theory of how to conduct relations between groups that regard themselves as distinctive, hold their separation from one another to be a good and, hence, value their independence.     

Man in search of his image

Vanne Goodall, ed. The Quest for Man. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1975. 240 pp. Illustrations, bibliography and index. $17.50.     

Past human exploitation of birds on the Isle of Man

This paper makes comparisons between various sources—historical, ethnographic and archaeological—that relate to birds on the Isle of Man, in order to give a picture of the former uses of birds by the Manx people. Written references suggest that seabirds in particular were an important source of the essentials of life, and this is reinforced by recent archaeological evidence. The bird bones discussed are from excavations at St Patrick's Island off the west coast and Castle Rushen, Castletown. Manx Shearwaters Puffinus puffinus were present in greater numbers than they are now, and two fragments of the now extinct great auk Pinguinis impennis were identified, confirming the presence of this species on the Isle of Man. The evidence points to over-harvesting of the shearwaters and members of the auk family. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Mean and Random Past: The Implications of Variance for History

Abstract

Historians seeking to identify the Irish have overwhelmingly relied upon nominal record linkage, thus limiting studies to periods and contexts in which corroborating records exist. Surname analysis provides an alternative: a subset of 283 Irish surnames was able to correctly isolate 40 percent of known Irish individuals across thousands of entries, which is sufficient for sampling the Irish in demographic studies. This conclusion was based on an analysis of 278,949 names from the London area in the 1841 census, and was tested and refined against 42,248 historical records pertaining to the poor in London between 1777 and 1820.