Degradation of Archaeological Remains by Shipworm

The marine borer, known as shipworm, has long been known for their degradation of wooden constructions in the marine environment. This review presents the results from a variety of experiments conducted at the National Museum of Denmark throughout the past five years dealing with the in situ preservation of maritime archaeological artefacts in light of the threat from shipworm. The aim of the research has been to improve methods and analyses for conducting experiments with shipworm, and to better our understanding of their attack pattern and how to stop an active attack in situ.     

Persistent deathplaces and mobile landmarks: The Holocene mortuary and isotopic record from Wadi Takarkori (SW Libya)

Recently, a new program of territorial study was launched in the area of Wadi Takarkori (Wadi Takarkori Project, hereafter WTP), located in south-western Libya at the border with Algeria in a strategic position between the Tassili and Acacus Mountains. The core of this program was the excavation of a rock shelter together with the systematic mapping and selected excavations of stone structures in the wadi area, mainly tumuli, a typical Saharan feature.     

The collapse of memory: The case of farm workers (French Vexin,pays de France)

The two authors have carried out an oral survey on a group of retired farm labourers in the French Vexin and the Pays de France regions (north of the lle de France). This paper examines the means by which individual memory registers the collective downward trend of this social group. It is remarkable for instance that respondents tend to recall memories of the “life of yore”;, opposed to life nowadays, instead of describing precise stages of their career, or the social evolution of their group and of the region. Their vision of History is fatalistic, syncretical, motionless, with frequent reference to war, exodus, moments of horror. All these elements express indirectly how a social group was crushed. Fragments of oral litterature that were collected on the same occasion refer also to the theme of social failure.     

‘Decolonisation’ on the Periphery: Liu Xiang and Shipping Rights Recovery at Chongqing, 1926–38

Between 1929 and 1932, Sichuan militarist Liu Xiang pursued his own anti-imperialist agenda in Chongqing, a port city beyond the purview of China's ‘central’ Guomindang government. In both its autonomy and its defiant tactics, Liu's programme contradicted the Guomindang regime's official strategy of negotiated revision of the unequal treaties. In its concrete objectives, however, Liu's project was strikingly similar to the Guomindang's programme of shipping rights recovery, an effort to reduce the presence and power of foreign shipping in China's coastal waters and an integral part of its agenda for treaty revision. This essay examines Liu Xiang's efforts to eliminate the privileges of foreign shipping, bolster Chinese shipping and extend his regime's oversight over all shipping within his garrison area on the Upper Yangzi River. In examining Liu's local motives as well as his marginalisation of central government institutions like the Maritime Customs, the essay addresses his fraught relations with the centre, yet, in contrast to standard nationalist critique of China's early twentieth-century warlords, it also reveals how efforts like Liu's may have multiplied the sites of resistance to the unequal treaties and achieved a measure of ‘decolonisation’ on the periphery of central government control.     

Hyaline tissue of thermally unaltered conodont elements and the enamel of vertebrates

Comparison of the ultrastructure of the hyaline tissue of conodont elements and the enamel of vertebrates provides little support for a close phylogenetic relationship between conodonts and vertebrates. Transmission and scanning electron microscopy shows that the mineralised component of the hyaline tissue of Panderodus and of Cordylodus elements consists of large, flat, oblong crystals, arranged in layers that run parallel to the long axis of the conodont. Enamel in the dentition of a living vertebrate, the lungfish Neoceratodus forsteri, has crystals of calcium hydroxyapatite, arranged in layers, and extending in groups from the dentine-enamel junction; the crystals are slender, elongate spicules perpendicular to the surface of the tooth plate. Similar crystal arrangements to those of lungfish are found in other vertebrates, but none resembles the organisation of the hyaline tissue of conodont elements. The crystals of hydroxyapatite in conodont hyaline tissue are exceptionally large, perpendicular or parallel to the surface of the element, with no trace of prisms, unlike the protoprismatic radial crystallite enamel of fish teeth and scales, or the highly organised prismatic enamel of mammals.     

New insights into ancient environments using dental characters in Australian Cenozoic lungfish

Environmentally-related wear conditions and pathologies affecting the dentition of fossil lungfish from freshwater deposits in Australia have been analysed and compared with similar changes in the dentition of the living Australian lungfish, Neoceratodus forsten. Fossil populations from the Namba, Etadunna, Wipajiri and Katipiri formations in central Australia, and the Carl Creek Limestone and the Camfield beds in northern Australia were assessed.

Tooth plates from populations of living lungfish from the Brisbane River and Enoggera Reservoir in southeast Queensland were analysed for comparison. Tooth plates were measured to determine the numbers of different age groups in each population. They were assessed for abrasion, attrition, spur and step wear, erosion and caries, and for trauma and pathological conditions such as malocclusion, hyperplasia, abscesses, osteopenia and parasitic damage. AH of these conditions are related to the environment where the fish lived, are found in living members of the group, and can be compared directly with those of fossil relatives.

The results suggest that some of the fossil populations were at risk before climatic changes late in the Cainozoic destroyed their habitats. Some fossil lungfish populations, such as those of the Wipajiri Formation, exhibit active spawning and recruitment, good growth rates and a low incidence of disease and environmentally related damage to the tooth plates. Others, like those of the Katipiri and Namba Formations, include no young, and the adult fish were ageing and show environmentally-related damage to the dentition. Etadunna lungfish had active recruitment, but the tooth plates show a high incidence of attrition and caries. Riversleigh lungfish were actively spawning but did not grow large. Tooth plates from this latter deposit have a high incidence of pathological conditions. Fish from the Camfield Beds, where food was severely limiting, had little serious pathology but high levels of caries. Pathologies among living lungfish are common, but fossil fish were comparatively healthy, with few serious dental problems. Information from studies of fossil lungfish confirms that conservation of the few living species of lungfish depends on the maintenance of clean environments that provide adequate supplies of food and suitable sites for spawning and for the growth of young fish.