The Archaeology of Missions in Australasia: Introduction

Missions have long been recognized as spaces of colonial contact and cultural exchange, and they are significant places in Indigenous landscapes today. However, archaeologists have only recently begun to explore such places across Australasia. This collection canvasses a range of approaches to this dynamic field.     

Legends,Traditions or Coincidences: Remembrance of Historic Settlement in the Central Highlands of Scotland

Study has established that sources of evidence (local traditions, documentary, cartographic, archaeological) of the burning of a settlement at Bunrannoch during the 1745/6 Jacobite uprising are contradictory. Some contradictions may result from conflation of long term social memories of earlier events during the late first millennium CE and the way in which the events surrounding the uprising were subsequently remembered. Such conflation may stem from the way identities of local communities were conceived during the late eighteenth century. Some members of local communities would have grounded themselves in traditional life ways, which were being actively transformed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In contrast, sponsors of change, or improvement, viewed such communities as largely criminal and impoverished.     

A Patina of Age: Elizabeth Macquarie (née) Campbell and the Influence of the Buildings and Landscape of Argyll,Scotland, in Colonial New South Wales

Elizabeth Macquarie, a daughter of Campbell of Airds, was the wife of Lachlan Macquarie, the fifth governor of New South Wales (1810–21). The buildings of Argyll, Scotland, strongly influenced choices made by Elizabeth in the buildings erected during her husband’s 12-year administration of the colony. By examining these Scottish influences, through theories of landscape and the transfer of traditional, even “old-fashioned,” architectural styles to this far-flung colony, new layers of meaning embedded within the landscape of Sydney Cove are disentangled to reveal a deeper understanding of how British cultural identity was recreated on the far side of the world.     

Islands in a Sea of Change? Continuity and Abandonment in Dark Age Corinth and Thessaloniki

In the sixth century after Christ, the Greek cities of Corinth and Thessaloniki were both still centers of imperial Roman and nascent Christian administrations, ancient population centers protected by high fortification walls. But much of scholarship continues to portray Thessaloniki as a veritable island of civilization during the next two “dark” centuries, with cities of southern Greece like Corinth virtually abandoned after earthquakes, plague, and barbarian invasion. Yet recently historians are reading the few literary sources much more critically, and excavation is also slowly beginning to fill in this gap. Thus long-known evidence of urban continuity in Thessaloniki along with the fruits of some of these methodological advances can begin to provide a new model of Dark Age continuity and abandonment for Corinth and other ancient cities of Byzantine Greece.     

Everything Old Is New Again: Recent Approaches to Research on the Archaic Period in the Western United States

There are regional differences in how archaeologists conduct their research on the Archaic period. The rich array of techniques and approaches used to examine this period in the West include human behavioral ecology and other evolutionary perspectives, technological style and aspects of practice theory, neuropsychological theory, and more. Recent research in the Great Basin, Southwest, Great Plains, Columbia-Fraser Plateau, and coastal California is surveyed to highlight commonalities and differences in the questions asked of the archaeological data and in the techniques that are used.     

The Archaeological Study of Spanish Colonialism in the Americas

Spanish colonial archaeology has undergone a fundamental shift since the Columbian Quincentenary due to the adoption of a bottom-up understanding of colonialism that emphasizes the analysis of local phenomena in a global context and the active ways in which people negotiated the processes set in motion by the conquest. This review examines five key research foci: culture change and identity, missionization, bioarchaeology, economics, and investigations of the colonial core. It ends with a consideration of ongoing challenges posed by the archaeology of colonialism, particularly the relationship of the individual to broader social processes and the emerging role of comparison.     

Cycles of Civilization in Northern Mesopotamia, 4400–2000 BC

The intensification of fieldwork in northern Mesopotamia, the upper region of the Tigris-Euphrates basin, has revealed two cycles of expansion and reduction in social complexity between 4400 and 2000 BC. These cycles include developments in social inequality, political centralization, craft production and economic specialization, agropastoral land use, and urbanization. Contrary to earlier assessments, many of these developments proceeded independently from the polities in southern Mesopotamia, although not in isolation. This review considers recent data from excavations and surveys in northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, and southeastern Turkey with particular attention to how they are used to construct models of early urban polities.     

The Study of Archaeological Floors: Methodological Proposal for the Analysis of Anthropogenic Residues by Spot Tests,ICP-OES,and GC-MS

The identification of chemical activity residues on archaeological surfaces requires the analysis of large numbers of samples, which can be costly and time consuming. Researchers wishing to apply sediment chemistry often are confronted with a dilemma of which technique to use and how to accommodate sediment chemistry into their budget. We propose an approach to the identification of chemical activity residues in which semiquantitative spot tests, which are cheap, quick, and easy to apply, are employed as an initial phase of analysis in order to leverage the results of more time-consuming and costly instrumental techniques. Three examples that pair spot tests with gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy and inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometry analysis show that spot tests successfully identify areas of interest. This approach can save both time and research funds.     

Recording Art on Neolithic Stelae and Passage Tombs from Digital Photographs

Current research on the carved, pecked, and incised art of Neolithic stelae and passage tombs in Brittany and Ireland has required the creation of a new method of recording. This new technique has several advantages over traditional recording methods (tracing and rubbing): It is noninvasive and it allows very precise data acquisition, as well as providing an accurate record of the carved representations. The present paper describes the four stages of the process and presents its analytical capacities, using as an example the carved axe from the Table des Marchands passage tomb.     

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.