Creating Choice: A Community Responds to the Need for Abortion and Birth Control, 1961-1973

Creating Choice is an important collection of edited interviewswith individuals involved in the movement to secure women'saccess to birth control and abortion in western Massachusettsin the decades surrounding the Supreme Court's pivotal rulings,Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 decision that legalized contraceptiveuse by married couples, and Roe v. Wade, the 1973 abortion rightscase. The collection broadens the historical treatment of thismovement, introducing activists from grassroots women's organizationsand accentuating the contributions of professionals—clergy,medical practitioners, and health educators—who establishednetworks and services that made free choice possible for somewomen even before state law extended     

Detecting the medieval cod trade: a new method and first results

This paper explores the potential of stable isotope analysis to identify the approximate region of catch of cod by analysing bones from medieval settlements in northern and western Europe. It measures the δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N values of cod bone collagen from medieval control samples collected from sites around Arctic Norway, the North Sea, the Kattegat and the Baltic Sea. These data were considered likely to differ by region due to, for example, variation in the length of the food chain, water temperature and salinity. We find that geographical structuring is indeed evident, making it possible to identify bones from cod caught in distant waters. These results provide a new methodology for studying the growth of long-range trade in dried cod and the related expansion of fishing effort—important aspects of the development of commercialisation in medieval Europe. As a first test of the method, we analyse three collections of cod bones tentatively interpreted as imported dried fish based on a priori zooarchaeological criteria. The results tentatively suggest that cod were being transported or traded over very long distances since the end of the first millennium AD.     

Systematic seasonal land use by late Pleistocene Tasmanian Aborigines

New research on the odontochronological (dental growth-increment) analysis of marsupial teeth provides opportunities to estimate with more certainty the time of the year Tasmanian Aborigines inhabited sites during the late Pleistocene. Here we focus on the Bennett's wallaby (Macropus rufogriseus) as a proxy for understanding seasonal human land use patterns and occupation of four southwest Tasmanian caves. The aim of the paper is to investigate whether caves at different altitudes were occupied in alternating seasons, and determine if the ‘Patch Model’ developed to explain the archaeological variability of late Pleistocene human behavior should be modified accordingly. The data presented here support the original observations that these sites, although reflecting extreme richness, were occupied in a punctuated seasonal manner with visits probably separated by a considerable time of unknown duration.     

Motives and opportunities for domestication: an ethnoarchaeological study in southwest Ethiopia

Farmers of southwest Ethiopia are currently transplanting yams (Dioscorea cayenensis) from wild contexts to home gardens. Ethnoarchaeological study of this practice can inform considerations of agricultural origins in prehistoric times by revealing motives and opportunities that shape decisions to adopt wild-growing plants. In one part of the study area, case studies demonstrate that decisions to manipulate yams may arise mainly among individuals of a particular gender or household composition. Comparisons across the study area illustrate the effects of slight variations in environment and human mobility upon adoption of wild-growing yams. The social and environmental factors that favor or impede manipulation of yams are highly specific and nuanced, and operate on both intra- and inter-community levels.