An empirical evaluation of copper procurement and distribution: elemental analysis of Scioto Valley Hopewell copper

In prehistoric North America, artifacts of copper occupy a position of prominence in the Hopewell societies of Ohio’s Scioto Valley. These artifacts also represent the social contacts and long-distance interactions that brought copper to the Scioto Valley. Yet, our understanding of Hopewell copper acquisition, and the movement of copper artifacts within the social networks of the Scioto Valley and beyond, has been limited due to the limited availability of geochemical data concerning provenance and variability. We begin to develop the foundation for understanding these important social issues by analyzing the elemental variability of Hopewell copper through the use of laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. We analyze 24 samples from four known copper source regions and 52 samples from 6 prominent sites in the Scioto Valley. Results suggest that a majority of the artifacts are consistent with sources in the Great Lakes, with a plurality classified as Isle Royale. However, 21% of Scioto Hopewell copper artifacts were most consistent with southern Appalachian sources. High elemental variability argues against simple models of copper acquisition and suggests that different social groups had access to a variety of copper sources through varying social networks. Native copper regardless of source seems to have been channeled along similar social and symbolic pathways. Our results suggest that instead of being derived from the struggle to access a specific source, value is derived from the social relationships represented by the copper and the connotation of exotic connection embodied in both style and material.     

The Great Shoe Store Robbery1

This article contributes to the significant debate on the effects of the Australian criminal justice system on Aborigines and in particular Aboriginal youth. This debate fed into nation-wide concern over an ever increasing number of Aboriginal deaths in custody, recently culminating in the Federal Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. Through the use of case studies and other ethnographic data drawn from investigations in the country town of Port Augusta, South Australia, the author illustrates how the agents of the legal and welfare systems in this state operate to present a view of Aboriginal juvenile crime as a normal response to these children's social environment and social conditioning. This process in turn, it is argued, reinforces and legitimates Aboriginal juvenile crime and contributes to its continuance, and the subsequent over-representation of Aboriginal youths at all stages of the juvenile justice system. Yet it is forcefully pointed out that Aboriginal children are not passive victims of the legal and welfare systems. Rather, they form their own interpretations of these systems and their ‘criminal’ activities are often attempts at defiance and capturing some form of control of their own lives in the face of a legal/welfare system seeking to impose control over them. Unfortunately, it is these very activities which return Aboriginal children to the legal and welfare systems they act against.     

A Twenty-First Century Archaeology of Stone Artifacts

Archaeologists today, as in the past, continue to divide their stone artifact assemblages into categories and to give privilege to certain of these categories over others. Retouched tools and particular core forms, for instance, are thought to contain more information than the unretouched flakes and flake fragments. This reflects the assumption that information to be gained from stone artifacts is present within the artifact itself. This study evaluates a continued interest in the final form of stone artifacts by first considering ethnographic accounts of stone artifact manufacture and use in Australia and then by utilizing the patterns observed in these accounts to investigate assemblage patterning within an Australian archaeological case study. Reading the ethnographic accounts provides no indication that Aboriginal people valued more or less complex artifacts, in uniform ways, in every situation. In fact, the opposite is true. Stone artifacts were always valued in some sense but which ones, and in which ways, depended on the situations the people who needed the artifacts found themselves in. Aboriginal people were quite capable of making and using expedient and informal artifacts in complex ways. The significance of these observations is considered for stone artifact studies in general and in relation to a case study from western New South Wales, Australia.     

Moving sources: A preliminary study of volcanic glass artifact distributions in northeast China using PXRF

Recent studies have highlighted the long-distance transport of obsidian from the Paektusan (Tianchi or Baitoushan in Chinese) volcano on the border between China and North Korea to eastern Russia and Korea, but little is known about the role of the local population in the production and movement or exchange of this important raw material. This paper addresses this data lacuna by presenting sourcing results of 440 artifacts from 18 Late Paleolithic sites located in northeast China. A portable XRF enabled rapid non-destructive characterization of samples. The results show that although Paektusan obsidian was widely transported throughout northeast Asia, material from at least three other sources was also used. In particular, we highlight the significance of basaltic glass artifacts with the same geochemistry as sources found in the Primorye region of Far East Russia in sites from northeast China. This result indicates a two-way movement of volcanic glass artifacts between Primorye and the northeast of China rather than a unidirectional long-distance exchange system originating from Paektusan Volcano.     

The Tywerrenge as an Artefact of Rule: The (Post) Colonial Life of a Secret/Sacred Aboriginal Object

In this article, I examine an Aboriginal ritual object, the secret/sacred tywerrenge which in many respects lies at the heart of Central Australian Aboriginal religious belief. Given its ritual power, the tywerrenge has always held a special place in the administrative rationalities of both colonial and post-colonial authorities. For certain missionaries, the tywerrenge was seen as an object to be eliminated as it constituted an impediment to Aboriginal “salvation”. For early anthropologists such as Baldwin Spencer, they offered material evidence supporting social evolutionist theories regarding the “staged” transformation of “primitive” religious beliefs into science. More recently, tywerrenge have been subject to an intensive regime of inspection and evaluation by government authorities, museums, and land councils. Indeed, they have come to play a significant role in the enforcement of Australian law under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act since the possession of a tywerrenge can decide the ownership of traditional lands. In short, these religious objects—and the beliefs associated with them—have been co-opted and employed by a variety of authorities in order to achieve a range of governmental ends. In this sense, tywerrenge have been transformed into instruments of colonial and post-colonial rule.     

Introduction: Representing Racial Issues

This paper seeks to show why there is a need to theorise race relations as a feature of white Australia's culture and as the context of Aboriginal lives. The violent drama of racial politics as glimpsed on the public media and as experienced by black communities all over the country, demands analytic attention. Anthropologists were once the experts on race, before the field lost its legitimacy. If we turn our attention to exposing the forms of colonial power that saturate Aboriginal social life, Australian anthropology may be saved from becoming an anachronism.     

New South Wales: an accidental case of semi-parliamentarism?

This response to Ganghof, Sebastian Eppner and Alexander Pörschke’s (GEP’s) challenging new account of government systems focuses on the extent to which their typology and arguments forces a reassessment of executive-legislature relations in Australia and particularly in New South Wales. First, I identify when and how different Australian governments might be claimed to have adopted their ‘semi-parliamentary’ model. Second, I question their claim that NSW constitutes an ‘ideal type’ case of semi-parliamentarism. Third, I explore the expectations of leading politicians in the 1970s about what would change following the reforms to the NSW Legislative Council (NSW LC), which in GEP’s terms shifted NSW from a parliamentary to a semi-parliamentary system. While the reforms were controversial, they were not seen as shifting NSW from parliamentary politics to some other type of government system. Fourth, I briefly explore the patterns of increased legislative activity and executive scrutiny exercised by the NSW LC after 1978, arguing that they are consistent with GEP’s concept of semi-parliamentarism. I conclude that semi-parliamentarism in NSW has been an accidental, unconscious development.     

Soft-Stone Sources on Crete

Abstract

Neutron activation analysis and other analytical techniques enable archaeologists to match certain stone artifacts with their sources in the living rock. Steatite, serpentinite, and chlorite, which are often called “soft stones,” have been matched with considerable success in tests on New World samples. Matching artifacts and sources helps the archaeologist in determining prehistoric exchange systems and thus gain considerable insights into ancient cultures.

In order to provide basic information on soft-stone sources on Crete with which samples from artifacts may be compared, a review of the literature and two field surveys were undertaken. The results indicate that soft-stone sources on Crete are more extensive than formerly believed. The correlation between soft-stone deposits and the location of ancient sites is also considered.     

Using network expectations to identify multiple exchange systems: A case study from Postclassic Sauce and its hinterland in Veracruz,Mexico

Exchanges of material objects often play a pivotal role in the trajectories of political, social, and economic development for ancient societies, but the study can be challenging because of the complexity of exchange. Multiple forms of exchange co-exist in ancient societies including market exchange and social exchange such as gift-giving. A further complicating factor is that different exchange systems such as redistribution and central place market exchange can result in the same regional spatial patterning of artifacts. Recent innovations in identifying exchange systems use network expectations for spatial, contextual, and distributional information to help distinguish between social exchanges such as gift-giving versus market exchange using household inventories. I introduce a Monte Carlo computer simulation to evaluate network expectations for alternative exchange mechanisms, using a case study of decorated ceramics from 65 residential inventories from the center of Sauce and its hinterland during the Middle Postclassic period (1200–1350 A.D.) in southcentral Veracruz, Mexico. Using these new tools, I identify the coexistence of several exchange systems operating simultaneously. The methods developed here demonstrate the potential of using network expectations to refine existing methods to identify different exchange systems that can be applied to other complex ancient economies.     

Biopolitics meets Terrapolitics: Political Ontologies and Governance in Settler-Colonial Australia

Crises persist in Australian Indigenous affairs because current policy approaches do not address the intersection of Indigenous and European political worlds. This paper responds to this challenge by providing a heuristic device for delineating Settler and Indigenous Australian political ontologies and considering their interaction. It first evokes Settler and Aboriginal ontologies as, respectively, biopolitical (focused through life) and terrapolitical (focused through land). These ideal types help to identify important differences that inform current governance challenges. The paper discusses the entwinement of these traditions as a story of biopolitical dominance wherein Aboriginal people are governed as an ‘included-exclusion’ within the Australian political community. Despite the overall pattern of dominance, this same entwinement offers possibilities for exchange between biopolitics and terrapolitics and, hence, for breaking the recurrent crises of Indigenous affairs.     

Who were bennelong and Pemulwuy? Museums in Sydney and interpretation of eora aboriginal culture

Abstract

The Eora Aboriginal People are the original inhabitants of the Sydney region [in NSW, Australia]. There are an estimated 2, 000 Aboriginal rock engravings in Sydney. Some museums in Sydney now acknowledge the traditional Aboriginal owners and use Eora words to name their exhibitions. These include: Ngaramang bayumi – music & dance (Powerhouse Museum); Merana Eora Nora – first people (Australian National Maritime Museum); Yiribana (Art Gallery of New South Wales); and Cadi Eora Birrung: Under the Sydney Stars (Sydney Observatory). The Aboriginal history of Sydney, however, is only told at the Museum of Sydney with installations, videos and spoken exhibits about Eora, the indigenous peoples of Sydney. This paper reviews the Eora Aboriginal exhibits at the Museum of Sydney. It questions whether visitors to Sydney learn about Bennelong and Pemulwuy, two key Aboriginal figures in the the early European settlement around Sydney Harbour. Sydney Aboriginal Discoveries on their Dreamtime cruise of Sydney Harbour provide another interpretation of Eora history and culture. The paper suggests the Eora heritage of Sydney should be more widely interpreted in Museums, National Parks and other public venues to rightfully acknowledge this Aboriginal history.     

X-ray fluorescence analysis and intra-island exchange in the Society Island archipelago (Central Eastern Polynesia)

We apply X-ray fluorescence (XRF) geochemical analysis to a collection of 'Opunohu Valley lithic artifacts from Mo'orea island to investigate the local scale of raw material procurement, adze production, use, and exchange within the Society Island archipelago. We use these data to document the distribution of non-local versus local volcanic artifacts in 'Opunohu Valley house sites, ritual sites, and specialized sites, as a means for establishing intra-site production and consumption patterns, and access to exotic, possibly superior, stone resources, and how these two themes correlate with site function or household wealth and status. Overall, 30% of the artifacts analyzed via WDXRF derive from non-local sources, notably two other islands in the archipelago outside of the political boundaries of Moorean chiefdoms. Our case study thus provides the first direct material evidence of intra-archipelago trade and exchange in the Society Islands. Intra-archipelago trade in adzes was certainly in place by as early as A.D. 1350, if not earlier, and continued up until the time of European contact. In addition, our analyses have identified a local adze production locale in the Afareaitu district of Mo'orea island. The patterns of local versus non-local adze production and exchange strongly suggest that dual interaction spheres were involved. The correlation between adzes and adze-related debris produced from off-island sources and sites with specialized use, which were often reserved for the social, ritual, and political elites in Ma'ohi society suggests that some of the exotic adzes derived from gift exchange between Mo'orea and ruling elites in Tahiti and the Leeward Islands. These adzes from afar would have solidified socio-political and ideological alliances between elites in the Windward and Leeward sectors of the archipelago.     

Taking Part in Mutawintji: Aboriginal Involvement in Mootwingee National Park

Aboriginal involvement in the management of parks was conceived as a means by which Aboriginal and conservationist interests could be reconciled. Participation in the management of parks increases Aboriginal control over land deemed to be of conservation value. Involvement in the management of parks as a means of empowering Aborigines is examined through a case study of Mootwingee National Park, in far western NSW. The management history of the park reveals that Aboriginal involvement has been facilitated by a policy commitment to consultation. Participation premised only on policy provisions has resulted in Aboriginal interests being underestimated or ignored. Aborigines will truly be empowered if their involvement is based on Aboriginal ownership of parks and a formal commitment to joint management.     

(Post)Colonial [1] Encounters: gendered racialisations in Australian courtrooms [2]

This article identifies how the Australian legal system has generated knowledge about ‘traditional’ gender relations in Aboriginal Australia. Using a sample of artefact cases from the Australian judicial system, constructions of Aboriginal gender relations are mapped. By tracing knowledge production in these cases, it demonstrates how the non-Aboriginal Australian legal system has fabricated its own versions of ‘Aboriginal Customary Laws’, or Aboriginal ‘traditions’ about violence committed by Aboriginal men, against Aboriginal women. (Post)colonial understandings about the Aboriginal ‘other’ have occupied spaces in legal understandings and then been enforced in law. The Australian judicial system itself is therefore guilty of perpetuating and privileging the ‘colonial’ in these encounters.     

"It is God who Speaks in the Thunder . . .": Mediating Ontologies of Faith and Fear in Aboriginal Christianity>

The connection between Christianity and the ancestral law of Aboriginal culture has generated considerable debate within Australian Christianity. I explore the intersubjective flow between faith and fear emergent within these two systems and show how external influences have impacted ruptures of ontological thought and experience. These ruptures have both emerged from and shaped social and political change for Yolngu from Galiwin'ku in north-east Arnhem Land. I examine a range of discourses of religious rupture and argue that Christian influences have, at different times, variously competed with, moulded, and naturalized Yolngu ancestral understanding, leading to a surveillance of the social, spiritual, and political relationship between the Gospel and Culture by Yolngu Christians.     

Initial source evaluation of archaeological obsidian from the Kuril Islands of the Russian Far East using portable XRF

Obsidian artifacts recently have been recovered from 18 archaeological sites on eight islands across the Kuril Island archipelago in the North Pacific Ocean, suggesting a wide-ranging distribution of obsidian throughout the island chain over the last 2,500 years. Although there are no geologic sources of obsidian in the Kurils that are known to have been used prehistorically, sources exist in Hokkaido, Japan, and Kamchatka, Russia, the southern and northern geographic regions respectively from which obsidian may have entered the Kuril Islands. This paper reports on the initial sourcing attempt of Kuril Islands obsidian through the analysis of 131 obsidian artifacts. Data from this research were generated through the application of portable XRF technology, and are used to address research questions concerning prehistoric mobility, exchange, and social networking in the Kuril Islands.     

Memories of the Past,Visions of the Future: Changing Views of Ebenezer Mission,Victoria, Australia

Former missions and reserves occupy an increasingly important place in Australian Aboriginal heritage, as sites of recent memory, ancestral resting-places, and the foci of social action in the present. Since the 1970s heritage managers have drawn heavily upon archaeological research in reclaiming places such as Ebenezer Mission for Aboriginal descendants as well as the non-Aboriginal community. This program of research and conservation has been shaped by Aboriginal memories and values that express the community’s self-understandings and its hopes for the future, in a process that reveals the relationship between tangible and intangible aspects of the past.     

Painting Country: Spatial,Somatic and Linguistic Experience in Central Australian Aboriginal Art

A demonstration that the spatial experience informing some Central Australian Aboriginal art is topographically precise brings into question the relevance of structuralist methodologies for appraising these maps of country. Qualitative aspects of spatial, somatic, linguistic and emotional experiences are found to inform the way‐finding depicted in paintings by artists of three language groups.     

Rethinking Aboriginal ‘Resistance’: The Community Development Employment (CEPD) Program

In this paper I wish to contribute to an understanding of ‘Aboriginal resistance’ by a study of the politics of remote Aborigines' ‘employment’. I begin by highlighting some themes in recent discussions of the Community Development Employment Projects (cdep ) policy, before looking back at some features of the welfare and pastoral economy in the Central Australian hinterland, c. 1950 to c. 1975. My aim is twofold: to show some of the cultural continuities in the relationships between remote Aborigines and government; and to criticise constructively the notion of ‘Aboriginal resistance’, to advocate a structural and processual notion of ‘resistance’ and to move away from one based on the clear identification of actors.     

Shadows on the landscape: an inquiry into the value of some Australian places

In 1922, Australian places connected with a solar eclipse were of world‐historical significance as they were associated with empirical confirmation of Einstein's general theory of relativity. They also formed a major part of Australian national consciousness, although they have since reverted to lost geographies. An exploration of Australian reception of eclipse science leads to questions of official heritage construction and stereotypical national identity. An argument is presented for the importance of intangible heritage at national, communal, and individual levels. At the complex intersection between memory and identity, place value is investigated within wider social‐political formations with emphasis on participation across perceived boundaries of social class, gender, and ethnicity, including the valuable role of Aboriginal peoples.