A first meeting place: John Webber’s An Interview Between Captain Cook and the Natives (January 1777)

On 26 January 1777, on the first stage of his third voyage to the Pacific, James Cook anchored in Adventure Bay on what is now called Bruny Island, Tasmania. Cook encountered the local Nuonenne people on two occasions, the second of which was recorded in an unfinished drawing (possibly done on the spot) by the expedition’s artist, John Webber. Comments in their journals from officers and sailors on board Cook’s ships indicate that the European perceptions and representations of Aboriginal people were initially mediated by the explorers’ stereotypical understanding of other races. However, through a close reading of a number of structural features of Webber’s composition – symmetry, resemblances in opposition, chiasmus, a figure who acts as a spectatorial stand-in, spatialisation – it is argued that Webber’s drawing recognises the Aboriginal people encountered by the British as individuals, attends to the dramaturgy of the encounter, and is marked in various ways by a powerful and grounded indigenous agency. It is proposed that anthropologist Marshall Sahlins’ paradoxical aphorism ‘structure of the conjuncture’ might be used to illuminate and designate the particular quality of events, the ‘indigenous countersigns’, depicted by Webber in this drawing.     

Interpretations of Burial and Commemoration in Moravian and African Diasporas on St. John, Virgin Islands

I address change and continuity in mortuary practices from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries within enslaved and free populations on the former Danish and current US Virgin Island of St. John. Based on the evidence I present, St. John’s former residents created diverse burial sites for practical and symbolic reasons related to environment, kinship, socio-cultural politics, and religion. The following analysis reveals how people historically transformed identities of selves and communities as they perceived and commemorated the dead through meaningful mortuary sites and practices within dynamic local and regional contexts.     

The Search for the 1871 Whaling Fleet of the Western Arctic: writing the final chapter

During 2015, the NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries led a systematic seabed mapping survey along the Arctic coast of Alaska in search of whaling ships abandoned in 1871. The purpose of the expedition was to determine if wreckage from these abandoned ships was still present in the survey area, and, if so, to assess and document its location, status and condition. The project mapped approximately 50 km² of seabed using sidescan sonar and magnetometry and identified six sites that contained wreckage from at least two whaling ships. Magnetometry data also suggested that additional wreckage may be buried in the seabed.     

The Nationalist government’s efforts to recover Chinese sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea after the end of World War Two

Utilizing substantial archival materials, this article examines the process through which the Nationalist government reasserted Chinese sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea, including China’s stationing of troops on Dongsha Island, Yongxing Island, and Taiping Island. Well-prepared militarily, economically, and diplomatically, the Nationalist government achieved this strategic goal after overcoming various difficulties including insufficient ships and funds, unfavorable weather and maritime conditions, and the obstruction of the French colonial government in Vietnam. The Nationalist government also sent technicians to survey the islands and map out the sphere of Chinese maritime territory in the South China Sea, and it built two weather stations. These actions were publicized on December 1, 1947. During this process, the government of the United States adopted a policy of acquiescence due to its close collaboration with China. When the French government occupied one of the Xisha Islands and attempted to take firmer action, the United States and Britain pressured France to make concessions to China, which led the French government to seek a diplomatic solution.     

Les corridors maritimes stratégiques dans l'Arctique canadien : un programme adapté au tourisme marin ?

The melting of summer sea ice in the Canadian Arctic allows for better accessibility and therefore increased development of marine tourism. This paper highlights a significant increase in cruise ships and pleasure craft in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago since the 1990s, especially in the strategic areas of the Lancaster Sound and southeast of Baffin Island. Based on spatial analysis, cruise ships and pleasure craft were mostly sailing inside the primary corridors and outside the secondary corridors; this is particularly obvious for the fourth secondary corridor of the western Arctic. Moreover, marine tourism activity related to cruise ships or pleasure craft occurred within a distance of 15 nautical miles and beyond the outer limit of a corridor, whether primary or secondary. The Northern Marine Transportation Corridors Initiative is an important tool to manage marine traffic in the Canadian Arctic and we need to continue to encourage its development through a multipartite approach and taking traditional Inuit knowledge into account.     

Scurvy as a factor in the loss of the 1845 Franklin expedition to the Arctic: a reconsideration

In 1845, an expedition, commanded by Sir John Franklin, set out to discover the Northwest Passage. The ships entered the Canadian Arctic, and from September 1846 were beset in ice off King William Island. A note left by the expedition in May 1847 reported all was well, but by April 1848, 24 of the 129 men had died. The ice‐locked ships were deserted in April 1848, but the 105 survivors were so weakened that all perished before they could reach safety. The causes of the morbidity and mortality aboard the ships have long been debated, and many commentators have argued that scurvy was an important factor. This study evaluates the historical evidence for the likely effectiveness of anti‐scorbutic precautions taken on polar voyages at that time, and investigates whether the skeletal remains associated with the expedition provide evidence for scurvy. Skeletal remains available for study were carefully examined for pathological changes, and lesions potentially consistent with scurvy were subject to histological analysis. Where remains were no longer accessible, use was made of published osteological work. It is argued that the anti‐scorbutic measures customarily taken on mid 19^th century British naval polar voyages were such that there is no a priori reason to suppose that scurvy should have been a problem prior to the desertion of the ships. The analysis of the skeletal evidence provided little in the way of bony lesions consistent with the disease, and cannot therefore be used to support the presence of scurvy. Factors other than scurvy may been the main causes of morbidity and mortality in the 11 months prior to the desertion of the ships. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Ethnohistorical geography and aboriginal rights litigation in Canada: memoir of an expert witness

Since the early 1950s, evidence from ethnohistorical geography has played an important role in aboriginal rights claims and litigation in North America. I became involved in Canadian aboriginal and treaty rights litigation over 35 years ago. My participation has included several landmark cases: Regina v. Horseman (treaty rights), Delgamuukw v. Regina (Comprehensive title claim), and Regina v. Powley (Métis rights). Most of the evidence that I have presented over the years has dealt with various aspects of the changing spatial economies of First Nations and Métis communities from Ontario to British Columbia. The Hudson's Bay Company's vast archive has been the primary source for this data.     

Legal geographies and ecological invisibility: The environmental myopia of evidence

This study shows how legal evidentiary rules intended to make trials fair also enable biodiversity loss, even in courts charged with environmental protection. The common law is premised on two types of rules. The first, substantive laws, set rules for how society should function—obstructing and punishing some behaviours while enabling and rewarding others. In contrast, procedural laws are intended to level the playing field when there is a dispute over substantive rules during litigation. This case study concerns a routine environmental dispute over land development in Sydney, Australia. It demonstrates how, by enabling courts to determine what evidence will and will not be considered, procedural rules and practices drive substantive outcomes by rendering certain places, dynamics, and connections visible and capable of judicial action while obscuring others. Specifically, the court’s efforts to use evidentiary tools to make litigation more efficient drove substantive outcomes in two ways. First, work to narrow evidence to address factual disputes also narrowed the court’s geographic scale of analysis to the property boundaries of the site, thus obscuring broader threats to a critically endangered ecological community. Second, these procedural evidentiary decisions drove substantive outcomes undermining biodiversity protection, while concealing their inherently substantive nature. Combined with the tendency of the court to use procedural informality to promote compromise between the parties, and a broader juridical treatment of intact ecological communities as species that can largely be moved at will, the evidentiary rules enabled an environmentally focused court to enable the victory of development over species protection.     

尼克松政府对中国钓鱼岛政策初探

尼克松政府时期是美国关于中国钓鱼岛政策的基本定位时期。在返还琉球群岛的过程中,美国单方面擅自将钓鱼岛的"施政权"返还日本,中日钓鱼岛争端由此产生。在钓鱼岛主权归属问题上,尼克松政府保持"中立"立场。在《日美共同合作和安全条约》是否适用于钓鱼岛问题上,尼克松政府一方面对日作出了默许的承诺,但另一方面却极力淡化甚至回避对其采取实际行动。在与台湾当局交涉钓鱼岛的问题上,尼克松政府否决了将钓鱼岛"施政权"从日本手中重新收回的建议,并建议日本与台湾当局进行协商解决。     

Constructing community at civic-ceremonial centers: pottery-making practices at Crystal River and Roberts Island

ABSTRACT

Crystal River (8CI1) and Roberts Island (8CI36, 8CI40, 8CI41) are neighboring mound complexes on Florida’s west-central Gulf Coast, with mainly sequential occupations during the Middle and Late Woodland periods, respectively. Previous work at Crystal River produced assemblages marked by a diversity of pastes and surface treatments, suggestive of distinct communities of practice. However, these excavations were unsystematic and poorly controlled, thus confounding understanding of temporal and spatial variation in practice. Recent excavations in domestic areas, combined with the analysis of older collections from mounds, support a finer-grained understanding of variation in ceramic production. Our analysis suggests that communities of practice persisted through time, although there is variation that corresponds well with changes in settlement.     

From Reconstruction to Development: The Early Years of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Conceptualization of Rural Welfare, 1945–1955

This paper examines the early years of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and its conceptualization of ‘rural welfare’, an approach that foresaw the modernization of agricultural societies and the alleviation of poverty through improvements in labor, housing, health, education of people working in agriculture. Based on the correspondence of FAO officials and experts, the paper shows how in the late 1940s, the Rural Welfare Division, under the leadership of its Director Horace Belshaw, promoted a low-modernist and local-sensitive approach to rural development that emphasized the subjectivity of welfare and that was skeptical of top-down development programs. As the paper argues, Belshaw's holistic understanding of rural communities was abandoned in the early 1950s in favor of an increasingly technical development consultancy, characterized by short-term interventions rather than by an intellectual and scientific debate about the larger implications of development.     

Archaeological evidence of an early Islamic monastery in the centre of al-Qusur (Failaka Island,Kuwait)

The history of Christianity in the Gulf is still largely unknown since both archaeological and written sources are sparse. Many questions remain about the development and disappearance of Christian communities, as well as their form. A few sites were identified as Christian because of the discovery of churches or crosses. A church was excavated at al-Qusur (Failaka Island, Kuwait) by the French Mission to Kuwait in 1988–1989. Since 2011, a new French–Kuwaiti Archaeological Mission in Failaka (MAFKF) has aimed to better understand the site’s phasing and organisation. The discovery of a large refectory and a small tripartite building that is most probably a monk’s cell, as well as the reinterpretation of a church-like building as a structure perhaps dedicated to the spiritual education of monks has demonstrated that at least the central part was a monastery, making it the second Christian settlement in the Gulf to be proven to be a monastery.     

A Sealers Midden Provides Evidence a Live Pig (Sus scrofa) was Taken Ashore at Heard Island During the “Elephanting” Industry (1855–1882)

Livestock was often released onto remote Southern Ocean islands as a food source for shipwreck survivors during the industrial whaling and sealing era. Although animals were put ashore at nearby Isles Kerguelen and Crozet, the historical records make no mention of domesticated livestock ever being set ashore at Heard Island between 1855 and 1882. Here we report a pig (Sus scrofa) mandible discovered amongst other bones and artefacts in an ??elephanters?? midden found at Spit Bay, Heard Island. The find provides very strong evidence a live pig was shipped ashore and eaten as part of the sealers meagre provisions. Archaeological investigations of middens at other sealing locations could produce new insights into the dietary habits of these men.     

The Search for A,otonatendïe

Abstract

Equivocal clues in the Jesuit Relations and the few other historical documents relating to A,otonatendie, an important, but short-lived, mid-17th-century, inter-tribal, anti-Iroquois coalition beyond “the Great Lake of the Hurons,” are now supplemented by archaeological evidence at Rock Island at the mouth of Green Bay in Door County, Wisconsin, suggesting a positive resolution to uncertainty about its location.     

Experiencing ‘moments of home’ through diaspora tourism and travel

Whilst the relationship between diasporic communities and tourism has been explored in the tourism literature, it has generally been underpinned by a limited consideration of the notion of home. Based on ethnographic research with an Iranian diasporic community in the South Island of New Zealand, this paper explores the different ways in which this diaspora community engages with travel and tourism to (re)produce and taste ‘home’. It is argued that the notion of home should be viewed as incomplete, contingent and fleeting, rather than fixed and permanent, specifically within the tourism context. The concept of ‘moments of home’ is presented to illustrate how diasporic communities use travel and tourism to find, maintain or make home when away from their original homeland. Thus, ‘moments of home’ is proposed in order to allow a more complex and dynamic understanding of the relationship between diaspora tourism and home.     

Strofilas (Andros Island,Greece): new evidence for the cycladic final neolithic period through novel dating methods using luminescence and obsidian hydration

The recently excavated coastal prehistoric settlement of Strofilas on Andros Island (Cyclades, Greece) in the Aegean sheds new light on the transitional phase from the Final Neolithic to Early Cycladic period regarding masonry, fortification, and richly engraved rock art. The fortification possesses early evidence of preserved defensive architecture, as evidenced from the plethora of scattered finds from within and around the settlement. Important features are carvings on rock walls which mainly depict ships, animals, and fish. Initial archaeometric dating via the application of luminescence dating of two samples from the fortified wall bearing engraved ships, and by obsidian hydration of two blades employing the new SIMS-SS method (secondary ion mass spectrometry via surface saturation), has been undertaken to determine the site's chronology. The former yields an average date of 3520 (±540) BC and the latter an average date of 3400 (±200) years BC, both of which, within overlapping errors, suggest the main settlement occurred during the Final Neolithic.     

Indigenization of the Pacific War in Timor Island: A Multi-language Study of its Contexts and Impact

This article provides a multi-dimensional picture of West and East Timorese participation in war-time violence using Japanese, Portuguese and English sources. It argues that mobilization of the ‘natives’ by foreign forces in neutral Portuguese Timor brought about a reorganization of social relations on Timor Island. From a local perspective, the exploitation of the Timorese resulted in a great number of casualties, and intensified existing tensions, but also created trans-colonial communities.     

Reconsidering global mobility – distancing from mass cruise tourism in the aftermath of COVID-19

Abstract

The mass cruise tourism industry (MCTI) is inscribed in a neoliberal production of tourism space that promotes the economic, sociocultural and environmental marginalization of cruise destinations. With cruise tourism halted as a result of the COVID-19, but likely to resume in 2021, I question the relevance of this form of tourism and propose future development alternatives aligned with deglobalisation and degrowth of the industry. Power relations with destinations communities can be critiqued using the concepts of global mobility and local mobility to show that the former, imperative for the deployment of mass cruise tourism, is a weakness for the industry in a post-pandemic perspective of reduced mobility. Destinations must use the industry’s dependence on global mobility as leverage to transform the balance of power in their favor and promote local mobility. They must embrace radical solutions to take control of their territory to favor a transition from “Growth for development” to “Degrowth for liveability”. Host territories, relying on national and regional governance, should gradually ban or restrict the arrival of mega-cruise ships, implement policies that promote the development of a niche cruise tourism industry (NCTI) with small ships and develop a fleet controlled by local actors.     

Archaeology Underfoot: On-Campus Approaches to Education,Outreach, and Historical Archaeology at Brown University

This article explores the methods and outcomes of “The Archaeology of College Hill” (AoCH), a hands-on fieldwork course at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. The first half of this paper recounts the results of a three-year research program (2012–2014) on the Quiet Green of the university’s campus. This work identified a material assemblage associated with the school’s first official President’s House and uncovered evidence for over two centuries of student life. The second half of this article addresses our pedagogical methods, including elements of replicable course design and feedback from a qualitative survey on students’ impressions of the class. By situating this project within wider dialogues on the role of fieldwork in undergraduate teaching, we demonstrate the ways in which practical, on-campus projects like AoCH can reach a more diverse body of students, increase enrollments in other archaeology courses, and develop a more engaged, de-centered pedagogy.     

The Newshot Island Boat Graveyard: an assemblage of 19th‐century vessels on the Clyde

A project by SCAPE, NAS, and local volunteers at Newshot Island on the Clyde near Glasgow has documented an important ships graveyard dating to the early 20th century. The vessels tell the story of the creation of the Clyde Navigation, represent a significant aspect of the river's history, and exemplify the technological and industrial development of the region. The survey and research revealed that the remains on site include the earliest diving support vessel known to have been recorded, and has resulted in the designation of the remains as a Scheduled Ancient Monument by Historic Environment Scotland.