Mission-oriented agencies: Means and ends of historic sites archæology

Historical Archaeology - Historical archaeology conducted for mission-oriented agencies is usually undertaken with specific objectives of developmental research in mind. The question is raised...     

Notice of the Proceedings at the Monthly Meetings of the Archæological Institute

The English glass industry adopted coal as a fuel at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the consequent reduction in costs enabling sales and production to increase. From a minor forest industry, glass manufacture became an important part of the coalfield economy, with innovative furnace structures forming striking features in the eighteenth-century urban landscape. Recent archaeological investigation has shown that glass-works have left significant survivals on subsequently redeveloped sites, in the form of underground flues and furnace bases, and residues from processes.     

Pacific Island history at the Australian national university: The place and the people ∗

Abstract

This article describes the context in which Pacific Island history developed at ANU. It suggests ways in which its agenda and methods were influenced by its loction in the Australian capital in 1946, by a budget which expanded until 1975 and has contracted ever since, and by ANU's evolving management structures. The Department of Pacific History expanded to include Southeast Asia, and (in 1991) merged into a Division of Pacific and Asian History, reflecting altered priorities. The original intimacy fostered collegiality between Fellows and Scholars, which has largely survived the growth of the School and the elaboration of procedures. The article describes the resources which have been created, and the non‐print media which many scholars pioneered. It ends by surveying the diverse backgrounds and later careers of its scholars.     

China’s geographical position in Europeans’ hierarchical imagination: A study on maps of Europeans from the perspective of intellectual history

Maps act not only as the carrier of the geographical information but also as the symbolic expression of particular cultural and political concepts, by which we can understand those people’s knowledge about themselves as well as about others. The maps drawn by the Europeans from the 16th to the 18th centuries vividly express the self-centeredness of the Europeans influenced by both the Christian and modern civilization concepts, and the maps also expressed their comments on the other parts of the world in such a mentality. Some characteristic maps and illustrations in the atlas of European history demonstrated how the Europeans formed and expressed their hierarchical perspective of the world geography. The position of China in the hierarchical world is one of the most important expressions of the European concept of China, and well served the purpose of our reflection on the cultural intercommunion.     

The Saga of the ‘Second industrial divide’ and the history of the ‘third Italy’: Evidence from export data

The idea of the Third Italy has achieved an iconic status in geography. It has come to represent one of the main geographical manifestations of the so‐called second industrial divide between Fordist mass production and flexible specialisation. Yet the idea has received limited critical attention since acquiring its elevated status. It deserves to do so, because it involves confusing a localised model of economic development with the economic character of a larger geographic region. Examining province level export data for the years 1985, 1991, 1995 and 1999 for both total exports and two key sectors using exploratory spatial data analysis, provincial rankings and LISAs (local indicators of spatial association) suggests that the export‐based homogeneity and dynamism of the Third Italy can be exaggerated. Italy's urban hierarchy, particularly the centrality of Milan, continues to play a significant role in the Italian economy. Common use of the term ‘Third Italy’ confuses an economic process with a specific geographical configuration.     

Tourism and the “villagers without history”: the case of Yubeng

In recent years, Tibetan Yubeng Village, located in southwest China, has become a hot spot for studying community tourism development in China's minority areas. Studies of Yubeng Village have been made on two tourism benefit distribution systems that are dominated by the community: the accommodation income distribution system and the caravan rotation system. Analysis and discussion of researchers are based on the formation, change, and influence of these two systems. However, different researchers have different interpretations of some fundamental facts, whether in terms of the time of the systems’ changes or in terms of the specific contents of such changes. Based on firsthand interview records and auxiliary secondhand materials obtained from field investigation, this study mainly takes “time of system change” as an example to discuss the reasons for these differences and advises that researchers should be more rigorous when facing those fundamental facts.     

Upper Egypt: vegetation at the beginning of the third millennium BC inferred from charcoal analysis at Adaïma and Elkab

Archaeological charcoals from two Predynastic sites located in Upper Egypt are studied to help reconstruct woody vegetation. “Ash-jars” from the cemeteries at Adaïma and Elkab appear to have been filled with domestic hearth residues as offerings. The results show the predominance of Acacias at Elkab and Tamarix at Adaïma. This difference may be due to the influence of more active wadis on the east bank, near Elkab. Adaïma has a more diverse and slightly more widespread vegetation compared to the present. There is some evidence for the tendency in an increase in aridity and/or human impact between the Nagada II period and the first dynasties (3500–2900 BC).     

Empires of Sentiment; Intimacies from Death: David Livingstone and African Slavery ‘at the Heart of the Nation’

The article re-examines the death of David Livingstone. It highlights the importance of an outpouring of disinhibited emotion in 1874. Despite a shambolic funeral, a working-class underdog and an anti-slavery tradition were placed ‘at the heart of the nation’. Media coverage generated the experience of intimacy from sentimentalised versions of Livingstone's death and interactions with Africans, unleashing mass empathy, moral feeling and humanitarian impulse. It was crucial to the development of Britain's soft-power empire liberalism, inspiring a powerful network, aware of public opinion, to later intervene in eastern Africa. Thus the role of emotion and emotion capital should be factored more into the history of empire.     

The “new” social history and the anthropological history of modern Mexico

Tutino, John. From Insurrection to Revolution in Mexico: Social Bases of Agrarian Violence 1750–1940. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. xvii + 425 pp. including appendices, bibliography, and index. $42.50 cloth.

Beezley, William H. Judas at the Jockey Club and Other Episodes of Porfirian Mexico. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987. ix + 181 pp. including notes, bibliography, and index. $19.95 cloth.     

Between historical myth and ‘Inythohistory’: the limits of Ottoman history

Abstract

‘“Myth and reality“’ as Professor Gombrich has reminded us in an historical context apparently far removed from that of Ottoman studies, are, as he has defined the phrase, perhaps only ‘a more genteel formulation for the blunter title of “lies and truth”’.