Risk Management Strategies Among African-American Slaves at Locust Grove Plantation

African Americans faced a variety of risks under the institution of slavery. The theory of risk management is used as a context for understanding the lives of slaves at Locust Grove Plantation in Kentucky and for deconstructing the common myth that slavery was unusually mild there. African Americans used a diversity of means at Locust Grove to cope with risk, including generalized reciprocity, food storage, religion, and strong kinship/community bonds.     

The Rising Agenda of Physician-Assisted Suicide: Explaining the Growth and Content of Morality Policy

Employing theories and methods of agenda-setting analysis, this article explains the rapid rise of physician-assisted suicide (PAS) on the national political agenda based on its status as a morality policy. PAS reached the mass agenda before the professional agenda, probably because PAS is an outgrowth of previous right-to-die policies and Dr. Jack Kevorkian's assisted suicides provided major focusing events. As in other morality policies, competing groups fight for the last word, but PAS has been blocked on most governmental agendas because its image and media tone has been mostly negative and public opinion is divided. Groups in a few generally liberal states have tried to enact policy through referenda when legislators failed to address the issue. We speculate that competing interest groups will become more active and that state courts will become a venue of choice in the future.     

The "Red Spy Queen" in a Male World

Book reviewed:
Kathryn S. Olmsted. Red Spy Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth Bentley.     

Specialization of ceramic production: A sherd assemblage based analytic perspective

One expectation of emergent complexity is that as ceramic craft specialization increases it is reflected by increasingly homogeneous products due to the modified organization of craft production by specialists. This question has most often been addressed by analysis of sub-sets of larger ceramic assemblages consisting of intact vessels from idiosyncratic contexts. However, excavations often do not yield appropriate whole vessel sub-sets. In order to evaluate the changing context of the organization of ceramic production, we engage a robust methodological approach to the analysis of ceramic sherd assemblages, rather than intact vessels, rooted in cluster analysis but which we rigorously evaluate by other means. We successfully employ this method to assess changes in the organization of ceramic production through a 1000 year sequence leading to the emergence of the Tarascan state, and conclude in this case that no significant reorganization of ceramic production occurred with Tarascan state formation.     

'Into every home, into every body': organicism and anti-statism in the British anti-fluoridation movement, 1952-1960

This article argues that the anti-fluoridation campaigns in the 1950s stemmed from concerns about both the increasing 'chemicalization' of food and the growing authority of the state over the private home and individual body. The British Housewives League (BHL), an organization typically thought insignificant after the late 1940s, was in fact at the centre of these campaigns. Steeped in the beliefs of inter-war and wartime organicism, the housewives believed that government intervention in food production and distribution was producing a post-war diet laden with harmful chemicals. The Ministry of Health's proposals to test water fluoridation in select communities in the early 1950s only further convinced the housewives that the state was harming the nation both physically and politically. More and more citizens would have no choice but to drink impure, potentially harmful water, they argued, and the burgeoning state would continue encroaching on private homes and bodies. While scholars have already demonstrated that what we now think of as 'leftist' environmental ideas were popular among 'rightist' movements of the 1930s and 1940s, the anti-fluoridation campaigns show that the BHL continued in the post-war years to intertwine our present-day notions of 'left' and 'right' ideologies.     

The 'Mardi Gras' Shipwreck: Results of a Deep-Water Excavation, Gulf of Mexico, USA

The 'Mardi Gras' Shipwreck is the remains of an early-19th-century sailing vessel lost in approximately 1220 m of water in the Gulf of Mexico. A recent archaeological investigation documented the wreck and recovered several artefacts, including glassware, ceramics, navigational instruments, a cannon, and a stove. Analyses of these artefacts and the surviving hull have led to preliminary conclusions on the nature of the vessel and its crew.
© 2009 The Authors