The Akko 1 Shipwreck, Israel: the First Two Seasons

The Akko 1 shipwreck was found in 4 m of water inside the ancient harbour of Akko (Acre), 250 m from the ancient wall, with its stern touching a submerged rampart. The dense framing-pattern and relatively thin planking, the extensive use of oak and the origin of the timber, suggest that this is the remains of a small armed ship or auxiliary vessel built in the Eastern Mediterranean. The ship has been provisionally dated to the late-18th or early-19th century, the late Ottoman period. The finds testify to its involvement in one of the naval campaigns at Akko.
© 2008 The Authors     

The Batan Grande-La Leche Archaeological Project: the First Two Seasons

Abstract

Batan Grande, occupying an area of some 55 sq. km. in the small coastal valley of La Leche in North Peru, is known as a mecca of grave looting that has yielded a considerable quantity of gold funerary artifacts. These destructive clandestine operations have not only prevented serious fieldwork but also effectively obscured the complexity and significance of archaeological remains that include nearly 50 extensive cemeteries and massive adobe constructions that together span some 2,500 years since the Formative period (ca. 1300 B.C.). Since 1978, the multi-year, interdisciplinary Princeton University Batan Grande-La Leche Project has been carrying out intensive field work with principal research interests in (a) evaluating the role of organized religion in cultural development, (b) establishing a regional chronology, (c) elucidating cultural interaction during the problematical Middle Horizon Period (ca. 600–1000 A.C.), and (d) documenting systemic relationships between cultural and natural processes. This paper presents the major results and interdisciplinary research strategies of the first two seasons as well as a model of the Batan Grande burial and religious tradition.     

Excavations at Muweilah. Preliminary Report on the First Two Seasons

Two seasons of excavation have been completed at the site of Muweilah in the United Arab Emirates. The excavation is prompted by a desire to examine the manner in which humans inhabited arid regions in the past. The project seeks to understand the subsistence practices at this site within the broader context of settlement patterns in late prehistoric southeastern Arabia and to examine some of the biases and prior assumptions concerning human occupation of environments which are often considered hostile and marginal. The results obtained in the first two seasons of excavations are presented below and they indicate that a positive contribution will be made towards achieving these objectives.     

Pleistocene sites in southern Yemen

In the autumn months of 1992 a small team conducted an archaeological survey in southwest Yemen in search of Pleistocene sites dating back to the early colonisation of the Arabian peninsula. The survey focused on those escarpments and terraces with exposed Pleistocene sediments. The team discovered thirty-seven sites, most of them multicomponent, with sixteen having a pebble-tool industry called Mode 1 and twenty-seven with a bifacial industry called Mode 2. Both industries were represented side by side on some sites. These thirty-seven sites, together with others found in northern Arabia and eastern Yemen, contribute to the growing recognition of a Pleistocene occupation of the Arabian peninsula.     

At the Horizons of the Subject: Neo-liberalism,neo-conservatism and the rights of the child Part Two: Parent,caregiver, state

This paper is the second of two that examine the paradoxical relationship of the child to the liberal notion of the subject. Together they explore the range of contexts in which children's relationship to parents and other caregivers raise questions about the nature of the subject qua individual, and highlight the potential for a ventriloquist discourse around the child in which political projects are mobilized by neo-liberal and neo-conservative groups that purport to speak for the child. The first paper examined the emergence of two contradictory images: the ‘knowing’ fetal subject and the confused child; the second paper explores particular forms of presencing and absencing of the child in relation to parental rights and questions of social entitlements. Both papers speak to the contorted somatography and topography of the child-as-subject that is emerging at an historical juncture when children's rights are being mobilized to undermine the gains made by a range of heterodox subjects. They point to the limits of liberal constructions of the subject in struggles for emancipation.     

At the border: contagion, immigration, nation

In recent publications and as an ongoing project I have been pursuing the idea that public health and infectious disease control have been part of the legal and technical constitution of 'undesirable' and prohibited entrants: an under-recognised means by which individuals and certain populations have been specifically classified and excluded from the territory and body politic of Australia. This article surveys and summarises these ideas and points to some of the recent redirections. These include a growing interest in the legacy of twentieth-century medico-legal border control on current (highly discriminating) regulations governing entry; a concern to make admissions under immigration and health law and regulation conceptually central; and the more familiar focus on race-based exclusions. Overall, my aim is to integrate the history of health and infectious disease control into the already extensive study of immigration and citizenship. Part of the effect of joint infectious disease and immigration regulation over the twentieth century has been the imagining, as well as the technical implementation of the island-nation as ostensibly secure, racially and territorially.     

The Hawārī of Socotra, Yemen

Hawārī are traditionally logboats carved from a single tree into a double-ended vessel which can be propelled by either sails or paddle. Hawārī can be found throughout the Indian Ocean from India through to East Africa, yet little is known about this ubiquitous vessel. The aims of this research are to address this lacuna in our knowledge by documenting the rich source of hawārī present on the island of Socotra, Yemen.
© 2009 The Author     

Terracotta figurines from the National and Military Museums in Sana'a, Yemen

This study focuses on sixty-five terracotta figurines in the National Museum and the Military Museum in Sana'a, Yemen.     

Unpublished terracotta figurines in the Museum of the Archaeology Department, Sana'a University, Yemen

Fifty unpublished handmade terracotta figurines have been collected by the Museum of the Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Arts, Sana'a University, Republic of Yemen. These figurines were obtained either as donations or through purchase, and most of them come from Al-Kherba Al-Bayda and Al-Kherba As-Sawda, and Bani Nuf in the Wadi Al-Jawf (northwest Yemen).     

At the ogre's house

The female helper identified in two recent articles in this journal is a figure in a stereotyped scene that exists in a number of different folktales. When the hero arrives at the ogre's house, this woman warns him that when the ogre returns, he will eat him. Then she protects the hero by hiding him. When the ogre comes in, he smells the human, but the woman (his wife, daughter, grandmother, or captive) prevents him from finding the visitor.     

HDOR 410, a mid-Holocene campsite (Hadramawt, Yemen) and the difficulty of determining cultural tradition

Located in Wâdî Mikhfar, Yemen, the stratified site of HDOR 410 was excavated by the French Archaeological Mission in Jawf-Hadramawt. The site illustrates the co-existence of a form of expediency and a form of complexity in the production of lithics, revealing the presence of industries with low technological visibility (expedient production of flakes) at a time traditionally characterised by marked typological constraints (production of trihedral points).