Bringing the Art Inside: a Preliminary Analysis of Black Linear Rock-art from Limestone Caves in Erromango,Vanuatu

While surveying and recording rock-art on Erromango over two field-seasons in 1996 and 1997, I had the pleasure of working with Vanuatu Cultural Centre (VCC) fieldworkers Jerry Taki and Sophie Nempan Sei. During this time, both Jerry and Sophie constructed a context of ‘meaning’ for the ‘black linear’ pictures that predominate in the rock-art of the island. Their ideas were highly influential in determining the direction of my research. Jerry spoke of the association of rock-art with warfare and women. Sophie identified certain motifs as clan designs, particularly those located in sites close to where she lives, at Happyland village in the south of the island. The aim of this paper is to understand more about the rock-art of Erromango by combining local knowledge and archaeological techniques of rock-art analysis. I focus on the black linear rock-art, describing its temporal placement and context of production. Temporal information is gleaned from patterns of superimposition among particular rock-art techniques and motif forms, as well as from independent archaeological and ethnographic contexts. It is proposed that black linear rock-art belongs to the most recent period of rock-art production on Erromango, likely within the last 400 years. Rock-art production and use is explored through artistic motifs evident on other items of material culture, including objects which are known, from ethnographic records, to be produced by either women or men. I suggest that black linear motifs were at least in part produced by women, perhaps to register their connection to place during periods of displacement. In accordance with Jerry's statements, ethnographic and archaeological evidence indicates that a salient feature of the island's social landscape over the last 400 years was small and large-scale intra- and inter-island wars. The black linear rock-art is interpreted in relation to this unstable social context.     

The Early Man Site at Warm Mineral Springs,Florida

Abstract

An excavation in stratified sediment more than 13 m. below the present surface of Warm Mineral Springs in Florida has yielded human remains 10,000 years old. Samples of wood from the same level of sediment in the spring in which a human vertebra was discovered provided a radiocarbon date of 10,260 ± 190 years: 8310 B.C. (Gak-3998). Wood samples from the next two superior 0.10 m levels of the test also yielded dates in excess of 10,000 radiocarbon years. A second human bone, a fragmentary ilium, was recovered a few centimeters outside the excavation in the sedimentary zone. These specimens may represent the earliest closely dated human skeletal remains so far discovered in North America.

Results of a geological study are in agreement with the archeological information. Radiocarbon dates on selected charcoal samples are only slightly younger than those reported above. The stratified deposit containing the human remains accumulated on a ledge between 10 m. and 12 m. below present sea level as a series of leaf deposits interbedded with calcitic muds containing fresh-water and land snail fauna. This lower leafy bed represents a stage of fluctuating water level in an open cenote. An overlying calcitic mud with only minor amounts of terrestrial plant debris represents a higher stand of the water table in the cenote. An upper algal sludge layer represents subsequent conditions of a flowing connate spring.

It is evident that the rising potentiometric water level in this large feature correlates with the post-Wisconsin eustatic rise in sea level. The fluctuations suggested by the lowest bed containing the human remains probably indicate variation in amount of precipitation. However, even the calcitic mud and tufa encrustations and formations that formed at the highest stand of water within this event are indicative of a climate considerably more arid than now existing.

Summary geological and archeological data acquired at two other similar solution features in Florida, Little Salt Spring (8 So 18) and Devil's Den (8 Lv 44), where unarticulated human skeletal material and artifacts dating from the late Paleo and A rchaic periods have been found, are included to extend and strengthen the interpretation of the geological sequence and the theory advanced that these sites were primarily utilized as water sources during periods when surface water on the peninsula was less available. There is no evidence that the sinkholes were utilized for habitation or sites of primary burials as has been suggested.

The recovery effort marks the first successful adaptation of standard archeological techniques to the excavation of a submerged prehistoric site.     

Making an Edgier Interpretation of the Gold Rushes: Contrasting Perspectives from Australia and New Zealand

This article examines the interaction between changing interpretations of history and visitor interpretation provided at heritage tourist sites. Generally, the literature distinguishes between history (which is seen as objective and fixed) and heritage interpretation (which is characterised as biased, selective and serving parochial interests). It is argued that history is actually far more dynamic and subjective and that this requires an ongoing revision of interpretation for visitors as historical interpretations change. To illustrate these processes, Goodman's concept of a new ‘edgier history of Gold’ is applied to interpretation at Sovereign Hill and the Mount Alexander Diggings in Australia and the Central Otago Heritage Trail in New Zealand.     

The Low Countries' connection: landscape and the struggle over representation around 1600

In Anglophone geography, the concept of landscape is often defined in visual terms as the expression of a spatial rationality. Historically, the strongly visual qualities of landscape tend to be related to early capitalist developments in Italy and the Low Countries. Yet, recent scholarly interventions have asserted that landscape in early modern Europe also animated so-called ‘platial’ (or place-oriented) practices and ideologies of political representation, justice, and custom. This paper seeks to bring these diverging platial and spatial approaches together through an examination of political and visual representation of landscape in the northern Low Countries around 1600. It is argued that the tensions between platial notions of landscape and spatial rationality were unceasingly pertinent to the protracted struggles over political representation in the Low Countries during the revolt against Spain. Visual representations of landscape provided ways to take in, reflect upon, and codify those struggles. The Dutch landscape remained entangled in a double dialectic in which spatial and platial modes of political and visual representation mutually shaped each other.     

Visual culture in Brazil's First Republic (1889–1930): allegories and elite discourse

ABSTRACT. The research on which the present work is based analyses the ornamentation of the façades of major Brazilian public buildings and investigates how that representation contributed to the construction of a visual national identity during Brazil's First Republic (1889–1930). Two government buildings are discussed: Pedro Ernesto Palace, inaugurated in 1923 to house the municipal chamber of Rio de Janeiro, and Tiradentes Palace, erected in the years 1922–26 to house Brazil's Parliament. The article focuses on the allegorical figures ornamenting these two buildings in order to explore contradictory aspects of the discourse they convey. It will be argued that visual culture, more precisely architecture and architectural sculpture, served the elites of this period as a powerful tool for projecting their values and for preventing contradictions within Brazilian society from emerging in visual terms.     

The Fabulous Tales of the Common People,Part 2: Encountering Hadrian's Wall

Abstract

In 2003, the Hadrian's Wall National Trail was opened, providing a 135 km (84 mile) public footpath along the length of the Roman frontier from Wallsend to Bowness-on-Solway. Each year, thousands of visitors walk the Trail from end-to-end and many more make day trips to visit specific locations within the wider World Heritage Site. In the second of two related papers (see Witcher, 2010), consideration turns from professional and popular visual representations of Hadrian's Wall to the ways in which visitors physically experience the monument and its landscape. The paper explores how embodied and sensory encounters produce and reproduce understandings which are charged with cultural and political meaning. Specifically, the elision of visitors and Roman soldiers through a process of embodied empathy/sympathy is outlined. It is argued that the way in which Western society assumes familiarity with an ancestral Roman Empire actively reduces the interrogative potential of encounters with the monument and limits visitors' ability to reflect on the significance of the Wall. The paper goes on to consider alternative modes of visual and physical engagement, drawing inspiration from virtual communities including geocachers who have used Information Technology such as Global Positioning Systems and Web 2.0 functionality to develop innovative modes of representation and encounter.     

God,Otherness, and Community: Some Reflections on Hegel and Levinas

Many critics have argued that the alterity of God is negated within Hegel's philosophy of religion. This paper will present the position that Hegel's approach to theology depends on a rigorous hermeneutic which does not negate the meaning and power of religious language and practice as they are found within various Christian traditions, though it does challenge the view that God is absolutely “other” than the human. Further, Hegel's approach to the interpretation of the divine-human relationship need not be limited to Christianity alone. Although Hegel regards Christianity as the highest, most spiritually developed form of religious life, certain fruitful correlations can be established between his work on the ethical dimensions of religious community and Levinas's ethical interpretation of Judaism. These correlations suggest that both Hegel and Levinas offer articulations of what can be seen as a “biblical” mode of thought in which the dialectical relation of God and human beings is central.     

SEEING SPATIAL STRUCTURES: ON THE ROLE OF VISUAL MATERIAL IN THE MAKING OF THE EARLY QUANTITATIVE REVOLUTION IN GEOGRAPHY

This article examines the role that visual material played in the early years of the quantitative revolution in Anglophone geography. It is part of a larger project that attempts to write a history of geography's scopic regimes in the twentieth century and draws on post‐positivist approaches to the history of science. It is argued that there are a number of strategic as well as theoretical reasons for such a reliance on images in the quantitative revolution. Some reasons are unique to the quantitative revolution in geography, some resemble a more general way in which paradigm shifts take place in science and some are located outside of academia. This article is primarily interested in the internal view on the geography of the quantitative revolution and its rationalities. The paper departs from Christaller's hexagon, as one of the most influential and iconic. It then broadens the view to include a much wider range of visual material, arguing for some more general observations on the use of images in geography during the early quantitative revolution. It is argued that there was a significant shift of forms and functions of visual material. Overall, it is argued, visual material gained in importance and while geography was getting “thinner” and more abstract, its role in making visual arguments became stronger. From being merely an aid for seeing, visual material became a prime carrier of knowledge.     

ELEMENTS OF THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE AS FIGURES OF SPEECH

It is argued that some elements of the cultural landscape take the form they do because they are the equivalents of the figures of speech of normal language. The paper examines: 1) the role played by figures of speech in normal language, 2) a model of the individual human person derived from physiological psychology capable of replicating the relevant patterns of observed speech and behaviour, 3) three figures of speech that (a) denote values, and (b) can be expressed in the landscape. It should be possible to test the thesis by means of systematic research. La thèse de ce compte-rendu est que certains elements du paysage culturel sont des transformations de certaines figures du discours de tous les jours. II s'agit d'une enquête sur : I) le rôle joué dans la langue par certaines figures du discours ; 2) un modèle de l'être humain qui est fonde sur des recherches des psychologues physiologiques, et qui peut reproduire les locutions figuratives et leurs transformations dans le paysage ; 3) trois figures du discours qui (a) signifient certaines valeurs, et (b) peuvent s'exprimer dans le paysage. Cette these serait capable de verification par la recherche systématique.     

'To Go Back up the Side Hill': Memories,Imaginations and Reveries of Childhood

This paper offers theoretical reflections on how adult researchers access, process and represent the 'worlds' of children and childhood. Recognising previous claims and warnings issued by geographers, it is argued that researchers can and should take advantage of the fact that all adult researchers have once been children, meaning that there are always fragments of connection allowing 'us' at least some intimation of children's geographies as experiencede and imagined from within . Gaston Bachelard's (1969a) 'poetics of reverie' is partially built upon just such a sense of connection, laying out the basis for a phenomenology of childhood wherein adults seek an imaginative revisiting of the reveries--the absent-minded daydreaming--of 'bored' and 'idle' children. This paper provides a critical exegesis of Bachelard's work in this respect, emphasising the importance to his thinking of geography, landscape and environment as both elements within and embodied spurs to childhood reverie. Questions about the admixture of adult imagination and memory in the recovery of childhood reverie are considered, and conclusions are reached about what can usefully be taken from Bachelard's 'poetics of childhood', notably in terms of a methodology of 'not doing too much' as an adult researcher in this field. Claims are also made about needing to take more seriously than hitherto the mundane reveries of childhood, those contained in children's own undirected jottings, drawings and play, as a possible source for future inquiries into children's geographies.     

More than Meets the Eyes?: Archaeology Under Water,Technology, and Interpretation

Abstract

Archaeology has had a long and interesting relationship with technology. Technology has arguably allowed us to move from antiquarian interest to the robust academic institution that we now are. The importance that technology plays within archaeology is perhaps best exemplified within the increasingly popular/populist 'sub-discipline' of underwater archaeology. After all, contemporary underwater archaeology could not exist if it was not for the invention SCUBA. Alongside the 'day-to-day' use of technology there is also a rush to latch on contemporary technologies within the sub-discipline. The reasons for this are examined within this work, however, what is argued to be more important is the implications this has had on our discipline.

This paper examines these implications on and as part of underwater archaeology. The impact of its use on interpretive thinking within the sub-discipline are analyzed by assessing the very nature of theoretical thinking within our work. This paper raises the difficult and perhaps controversial question — are underwater archaeologists merely substituting technology for theory and as such offering, admittedly impressive, complex and sound scientific computer models as interpretation, rather than the data that they really are?     

Vegetation history at the multi-period prehistoric complex at Ballynahatty,Co. Down,Northern Ireland

Palaeoecological methods can provide an environmental context for archaeological sites, enabling the nature of past human activity to be explored from an indirect but alternative perspective. Through a palynological study of a small fen peatland located within the catchment of a multi-period prehistoric complex at Ballynahatty, Co. Down, Northern Ireland, we reconstruct the vegetation history of the area during the early prehistoric period. The pollen record reveals tentative evidence for Mesolithic activity in the area at 6410–6220 cal BC, with woodland disturbance identified during the Mesolithic–Neolithic transitional period ca. 4430–3890 cal BC. A more significant impact on the landscape is observed in the Early Neolithic from 3950 to 3700 cal BC, with an opening up of the forest and the establishment of a mixed agricultural economy. This activity precedes and continues to be evident through the Mid-Neolithic during which megalithic tombs and related burial sites were constructed at Ballynahatty. Due to chronological uncertainties and a possible hiatus in peat accumulation in the fen, the contemporary environment of the Ballynahatty timber circle complex (constructed and used ca. 3080–2490 cal BC) and henge (dating to the third millennium cal BC) cannot certainly be established. Nevertheless, the pollen record suggests that the landscape remained open through to the Bronze Age, implying a long continuity of human activity in the area. These findings support the idea that the Ballynahatty prehistoric complex was the product of a gradual and repeated restructuring of the ritual and ceremonial landscape whose significance continued to be recognised throughout the early prehistoric period.     

Teaching Geography to Non-geographers at Glasgow Caledonian University

This paper discusses the teaching of geography to 'non-geographers' at Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU). GCU is one of the so-called 'new' universities in the UK and it shares with many of these institutions a mission to facilitate access to groups that have traditionally been under-represented in higher education. Human geography is one of the six subject area streams within the interdisciplinary social sciences degree programme, although geographical subject matter is taught in many other degree programmes, in each of GCU's three faculties. The arrangements for teaching human geography at GCU present pedagogical challenges for staff. Means to address these problems have been implemented. In this case study, it is argued that the experience of teaching human geography to 'non-geographers' at GCU may be of more general significance to the discipline, to the teaching of geography in both 'old' and 'new' universities and to those responsible for the delivery of mainstream geography degree programmes.     

The use of strontium isotopes as an indicator of migration in human and pig Lapita populations in the Bismarck Archipelago,Papua New Guinea

This paper examines the potential use of strontium isotopes (⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr) for identifying migration within Lapita populations and their commensal animals, specifically the pig (Sus scrofa). Lapita people (ca. 3300–2200 BP) were the initial colonists of the island groups to the east of the Solomon Islands, spreading from Papua New Guinea to Tonga and Samoa within a few centuries. Mobility is assumed to have been an important mechanism for maintaining cultural solidarity between Lapita communities. It has been previously argued that Lapita populations became progressively more sedentary over time after the initial colonising events. Two Lapita sites, Kamgot and Balbalankin, from the Anir Islands in the Bismarck Archipelago are included in the analysis and fall within the Early (ca. 3300–3000/2900 BP) and Middle (ca. 3000/2900–2700 BP) Lapita periods respectively.     

The Creation and Endurance of Memory and Place Among First Nations of Northwestern Ontario, Canada

Examinations of rock art typically focus on acts of creation and compositional meaning, with little attention paid to the position of these created places in the palimpsest of history. As these sites endure, their recognition and importance within subsequent social developments, including memory and oral tradition, are both invented and reinvented as descendant populations become established or as new populations move in displacing or replacing the makers. This paper examines the ways in which oral histories of historic and contemporary First Nations populations in northwestern Ontario, Canada, challenge standard understandings of rock-art in the region, taking these sites out of the maker/meaning context and placing them within a framework of user/caretaker. The results of this contextual shift contest notions of applied cultural affiliation and traditional ownership, resulting in a perspective that reveals a transgenerational and transcultural endurance of these places in the contemporary social memory of these Indigenous communities.     

Human Adaptive Responses to Catastrophic Landscape Disruptions During the Holocene at Numundo,PNG

Prehistoric land use and social activity in West New Britain, PNG, are well documented, although the landscapes – largely shaped by catastrophic volcanic eruptions – in which these took place, and the relationships people had with these landscapes, are poorly understood. We define the evolving landscape at Numundo, from prior to the Witori-Kimbe 2 eruption (W-K2, ca. 3600 BP) to after the Witori-Kimbe 4 eruption (W-K4, ca. 1400 BP), using fossil phytolith and coral evidence at eight archaeological sites to provide environmental evidence of the human responses to periodic catastrophic events. From ca. 5900 to 3600 BP, all the sites were coastal and disturbed. Early disturbance reflected natural forest recovery after W-K1 (ca. 5900 BP), whereas the later landscape was largely shaped by human activity. In contrast, forest regrowth was limited after W-K2 and open environments typical of human activity with a mosaic of regenerating, disturbed and managed vegetation, persisted until W-K3. Environmental recovery from W-K3 and W-K4 (ca. 1700 BP and ca. 1400 BP) differed completely, reflecting severity of the volcanism and the short time between eruptions. The landscape after W-K3 was largely a naturally recovering landscape, in contrast to effective vegetation recovery and significant human exploitation of the landscape – again a mosaic of regenerating, disturbed and managed vegetation – after W-K4. The social history is one in which people evolved increasingly flexible land-use practices, enabling them to re-settle this periodically disrupted landscape, and to take advantage of an increasingly broad range of habitats suitable for cultivation. The human response to this highly dynamic landscape represents a close relationship between social and natural processes, as people became increasingly better at re-settling an unpredictably disrupted landscape; both the social and environmental processes within this landscape become equally influential and instrumental in shaping the effects of the other.     

Representations of an Imagined Past: fairground heritage villages

This paper is concerned with groups of historic vernacular buildings, assembled and displayed as 'villages' at agricultural fairgrounds. These are grassroots versions of open-air museums and heritage sites developed by public institutions and private foundations. The fairground heritage village structures are usually collected by volunteers and moved to existing county or state fairgrounds, then used in similar ways as professionally managed sites. The location and situation offer certain advantages, but also present problems that stem from being authentic structures presented as a fictional village. Because narrative, scale and editing are factors in the conflict, adding an outward-directed layer of interpretation would visually reconnect the dislocated buildings with their original sites. This is intended to destabilise the past as a fixed, isolated place, and link the village display to landscape change in the region.     

The Cost of a Commute: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Osteoarthritis in New Kingdom Egypt

This article evaluates rates of osteoarthritis of the lower limb in human remains from Deir el‐Medina in order to compare the health of the residents of Deir el‐Medina with previous studies on other ancient Egyptian and Nubian populations. This study focuses on osteological observations from the commingled New Kingdom human remains documented during the 2012–2014 field seasons of the Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale. This is the first publication of osteoarthritis for the human remains at Deir el‐Medina, a dataset which complements comparable populations at sites such as Amarna, Giza, and Tombos. It demonstrates that men in the village of Deir el‐Medina experienced significantly higher rates of osteoarthritis in the ankle and knee in comparison to women at Deir el‐Medina. Rates of osteoarthritis in the lower limb at Deir el‐Medina generally fall between workers' cemeteries and middle‐class or elite cemeteries. This study also includes data from Deir el‐Medina's detailed textual record and intact landscape in order to determine how occupation influenced these higher rates of osteoarthritis. The duration, intensity, and frequency of the workmen's hikes are reconstructed based on the surrounding landscape and 42 texts recording work days. This study compares rates of osteoarthritis with these datasets in order to document how the strain, duration, and frequency of the workmen's hikes may have impacted overall rates of osteoarthritis. Consequently, data from the texts and landscape surrounding Deir el‐Medina not only corroborate osteoarthritis patterns, but offer detailed daily life activity which can be used as a comparison for broader studies on osteoarthritis in ancient and modern populations. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.