Captain Cook upon Changing Seas: Indigenous Voices and Reimagining at the British Museum

ABSTRACT

This article reviews the British Museum exhibition, Reimagining Captain Cook: Pacific Perspectives, 29 November 2018–4 August 2019. It situates the exhibition within a global context of exhibitions held around the 250th anniversary of Cook’s first voyage, and critically considers its attempt to reframe dominant narratives surrounding Cook, his voyages and more broadly the colonization of the Pacific through a focus on Pacific Islander perspectives within a changing museum sector.     

Ethno-geochemical and Phytolith Studies of Activity Related Patterns: A Case Study from Al Ma’tan,Jordan

ABSTRACT

Understanding Neolithic sites in southwest Asia is often difficult because of the lack of preservation of organic remains and the effects of various taphonomic processes that alter the original record. Here, we use an ethnographic approach to test the potential of using plant phytoliths and geochemistry to aid our interpretation of southwest Asian Neolithic sites. Our study of a recently abandoned stone and mud constructed village in Jordan, shows that for certain activity types, phytoliths and geochemistry can help distinguish different construction methods and functions, particularly for burnt areas, animal use areas and where there has been the addition of a specific construction material. For features constructed from the same source materials distinctions are more problematic. Geochemical and phytolith proxies were individually effective in distinguishing activity areas and construction materials, but signals were diminished when the statistical analysis was run on both forms of evidence combined. It is therefore recommended that the data from plant phytolith and geochemical analyses are subject to separate statistical tests and that the two sets of results are used in combination to interpret archaeological sites and their uses.     

War and peace in the contemporary French film ecosystem: Valérie Donzelli’s La Guerre est déclarée

This article analyses Valérie Donzelli’s film Declaration of War (La Guerre est déclarée, 2011), in the context of the contemporary French film ecosystem. The article argues that Donzelli’s film exemplifies the French miniaturist mode of production; demonstrates the modern conceptual notion of applied cinephilia; highlights the idiosyncratic uses possible for French popular genres, particularly the comedy and the musical; and embodies the French film industry’s export mission by representing on-screen the French national healthcare system.     

Housing Vancouver, 1972–2017: A personal urban geography and a professional response

The forum includes a research paper, preceded by a brief introduction and followed by five short responses from Pablo Mendez, Loretta Lees, Margaret Walton-Roberts, Ilse Helbrecht, and Alison Mountz. Mountz's introduction sets the context for the paper and makes some framing remarks on David Ley's career. The main paper examines the housing question in Vancouver, in the period from 1972 to 2017. Re-examining a number of Ley's research projects over this period, three broader themes are explored: the continuity of the housing crisis, and its reconfiguration over the period under study; the contrast between innovative and interventionist housing policy in the 1970s, with the later withdrawal of the state from significant intervention while endorsing market solutions; and the new centrality of housing as an empirical and analytical category in current human geography. This period saw upscaling from the 1970s welfare state to neoliberal globalization, including wealth immigration and off-shore property investment that accelerated serious metropolitan affordability problems. Following this research paper, colleagues and former students respond to the paper and locate the contributions in David Ley's broader career. Their commentaries address Ley's key contributions to debates in human geography, including his work on gentrification, urbanism, urban activism, global migration, art, aesthetics, and ethnography.     

The origin of rock boring in mytilacean pelecypods

Rock boring is a widespread mode of life in pelecypods, occurring in some representatives of eight superfamilies. After a brief review of rock boring mechanisms of the Mytilacea, the systematic position and taxonomy of Corallidomus scobina new name are discussed and evidence is presented for regarding this species as a facultative rock boring mytilacean pelecypod. This is the oldest known (Late Ordovician) occurrence of rock boring by pelecypods in the fossil record.