Explaining the monopoly in shell-bead production on the Channel Islands: drilling experiments with four lithic raw materials

Significant political and economic developments among the Chumash of southern California were catalyzed in part by the emergence of an intensive, specialist-driven shell-bead industry during the second millennium CE on the Santa Barbara Channel Islands. The production of millions of beads depended in turn on the availability of lithic microdrills of standardized form and materials. Channel Islanders quarried a particular stone type, a blocky Monterey Formation chert, from multiple outcrops situated close to the eastern shores of Santa Cruz Island. Rich archaeological assemblages document the lithic and shell byproducts of these intertwined production systems, each of which endured for several centuries (CE 1150–1819). Islanders invariably chose Island chert for making microdrills: hundreds of thousands of specimens recorded to date are of this material. Furthermore, nearly every microlith in all of Chumash territory (post CE 1150) was produced on the islands; the large populations on the mainland did not participate in microlith making or bead making after CE 1150–1200. We argue that this pattern had its roots not only in the patchiness of key resources and shifting regional social relationships, but also in the physical properties of available raw materials. Here we experimentally assess the properties of Santa Cruz Island chert alongside three important mainland raw materials—Grimes Canyon fused shale, Coso obsidian, and Vandenberg chert—that potentially could have been tapped to make microliths. We test the proposition that Island chert outperforms other lithic materials in drilling efficiency and drill use life. Our experimental results from 108 drilling trials reveal sharp distinctions in performance characteristics across the four materials. We infer that the process by which Islanders became the more-or-less exclusive manufacturers of shell-bead currency in southern California was facilitated by both the efficacy and physical properties of the Island cherts and the propitious locations of the outcrops.     

Voluntary Environmental Governance Arrangements in the Australian Building Sector

Voluntary environmental governance arrangements (VEGAs) are designed to minimise negative outcomes through the use of collectively agreed arrangements. They have attracted a large literature, but issues remain unresolved, especially regarding their effectiveness. This article takes up a small part of this challenge of mapping the role of VEGAs in larger systems of environmental governance by examining the development and implementation of a range of VEGAs in the Australian building sector, here defined as the construction and use of buildings.

人们设计了自愿环境治理计划,意在通过集体认同的安排尽量减少消极结果。它吸引了大量文献的关注,但问题依旧是问题,特别在效率方面。本文试图回答其中一小部分问题,通过考察其在澳大利亚建筑部门（这里定义为建筑和建筑物的使用）,看看自愿环境治理计划在更大的环境治理中究竟扮演什么样的角色。     

The Lead Ingots from the Wreck of the Zuiddorp (1712), Western Australia: a report on their provenance and manufacture

The Dutch United East India Company ship Zuiddorp vanished on its way to Batavia in 1712 – its last port of call was the Cape of Good Hope. After its wreck was found on the Western Australian coast, archaeological investigations resulted in the retrieval of 21 lead ingots. Recent study of this artefact assemblage, comprising both great pigs and pieces, suggests that they were of north English origin. Historical records indicate that the Dutch procured large quantities of lead from English sources and maritime trade links between English and Dutch ports were well established at the beginning of the 18th century. © 2012 The Authors     

Visualising Values in the Caribbean: A Creative Approach to Value Assessment

In this article, a creative heritage value assessment that was developed on the island of St Christopher (St Kitts), West Indies is discussed and evaluated. A synergetic approach emerged out of a collaboration between local heritage managers and policy officials with foreign heritage researchers and archaeologists. Together, they developed a transdisciplinary and practice-oriented approach based upon capturing values with audiovisual methods, which effectively integrated archaeological-historical research as well as outreach and dissemination activities in the value-assessment process. This effectively brought valorisation as well as the contested and multivocal nature of heritage to the heart of a transparent heritage management process. The practicalities and rationale of this approach are discussed, as well as its potential benefits for the combined three fields of local heritage management, archaeological-historical research, and public outreach.     

Tropes of a Texan trauma: monumental Dallas after John F. Kennedy

Dealey Plaza in central Dallas serves both as a ‘cradle’ and a ‘grave’; at this historic site Dallas was born and an American president died. The assassination of President Kennedy on 22 November 1963 changed Dealey Plaza, the site where the first citizen of Dallas settled in 1841, from a symbol of civic pride into a place of guilt and shame. After the events of 1963, the Dallas community voiced a wish to forget and hence, the exact location where Kennedy was murdered was initially remembered by neither monument nor plaque. At the same time, America grieved and from all over the country US citizens started to visit the assassination site. Dealey Plaza became a place of pilgrimage, which caused a change in the monumental landscape and eventually transformed civic guilt into civic pride. This article offers an analysis of the responses to this Texan trauma in terms of commemorative heritage and describes Dallas’ shift from ‘amnesia’ to ‘identification’, two contrary responses to traumatic, or mourning, heritage.     

From analogue to digital and back again: institutional dynamics of heritage innovation

This article traces the emergence of a digital imperative – the belief in the necessity of digitising cultural expressions – in a particular heritage project in the Dutch city of Maastricht. The main reason for doing so is to contribute to the growing body of literature on digital cultural heritage, a perspective that pays analytical attention to the organisational and institutional dynamics of heritage innovation. Such a perspective complicates the popular assumption that digitisation will be beneficial to participation and instead puts forward – by drawing on institutional theory and the sociology of expectations – a less technology‐centric and more contextual understanding of digital heritage. The conclusion highlights the potential of institutional analysis and the sociology of expectations for digital heritage studies.