From riches to rags: organic deterioration at Star Carr

The 11,000-year old lake edge archaeological site of Star Carr in the Vale of Pickering of North Yorkshire is one of the most famous Mesolithic sites in Europe, and one of the earliest, dated to the period of climatic warming that immediately followed the final termination of the last ice age. One of the main reasons for this international importance is the richness of its organic artefacts, faunal assemblage and environmental data. However, recent investigations have demonstrated that these organic remains have severely deteriorated over the last 60 years due to the decay and acidification of the surrounding peat. This paper presents research into the effects on the bone (histological analysis using light and polarising microscopy, and Transmission Electron Microscopy, bulk collagen analysis, and amino acid analysis), antler (visual and metrical analysis, loss on ignition and Scanning Electron Microscopy) and wood (visual analysis, decay assessment tests and Scanning Electron Microscopy).     

One for the master and one for the dame: stable isotope investigations of Iron Age animal husbandry in the Danebury Environs

Stevens et al. (Oxford J Archaeol 29: 407–428, 2010) speculated that the extensive faunal intra-population isotopic variability at Danebury hillfort was due to the animals being husbanded within various ecological isozones (i.e. microenvironments with distinct natural or anthropogenic isotopic baselines) within the Danebury Environs, and subsequently brought to the hillfort. We test this hypothesis through isotopic analysis of 357 animals from five sites in the Danebury Environs (Suddern Farm, Nettlebank Copse, Houghton Down, New Buildings, Bury Hill). Our results demonstrate that the hypothesis is incorrect as the Environs animals also exhibited extensive intra-site isotopic variability. The observed patterns require considerable human management of herds and flocks, either through animal droving over long distances, or movement restriction through personal attendance or penning/corralling within a landscape containing a mosaic of isozones. Large-scale importation of animals to the Danebury sites from distant regions that have different isotopic baseline values is possible. However, the practical requirements of this model (i.e. long distance trade networks maintained in terms of frequency, proportion and source of animals over 500 years) make this improbable. Rather, we propose a model that includes distinct ecological isozones within the Danebury Environs landscape, with some animals from each of the sites consuming foodstuff from different isozones for most of their lives. This likely involves control of the landscape on a communal probably kinship basis, with individuals having access to certain parts of the landscape at certain times. The landscape could be seen as being made up of numerous interlocking activity-territories, defined in both space and time, remembered and inherited. Irrespective of which model proves to be the most accurate, these results paint a picture of complex land management during the Iron Age.     

Book Reviews

ROBERT E. CONRAD. Children of God's Fire: A Documentary History of Black Slavery in Brazil. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. Pp. xxvi, 515. $50.00 cloth; $16.50 paper (US). Reviewed by A.J.R. Russell-Wood

STEPHEN KERN. The Culture of Time and Space: 1880–1918. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983. Pp. 372. $25.00 (US). Reviewed by Frank M. Turner

ESCOTT REID. On Duty: A Canadian at the Making of the United Nations, 1945–1946. Toronto: McClelland &; Stewart, 1983. Pp. xxii, 181. $16.95 (Can.). Reviewed by Robert Bothwell

LESTER LANOLEY. The Banana Wars: An Inner History of American Empire, 1900–1934. Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press, 1983. Pp. vii-viii, 255. $26.00 (US). Reviewed by Richard D. Challener

RICHARD BOSWORTH. Italy and the Approach of the First World War. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983. Pp. 174. $22.50 (US). Reviewed by Samuel R. Williamson, Jr.

ROBERT MIRAK. Torn Between Two Lands: Armenians in America, 1890 to World War I. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983. Pp. xiv, 384. $25.00 (US). Reviewed by George B. Kooshian, Jr.

LEE FEIGON. Chen Duxiu: Founder of the Chinese Communist Party. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. Pp. 297. $25.00 (US). Reviewed by William Saywell

GHARLES CRUICKSHANK. SOE in the Far East. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. Pp. 285. $25.00 (US). Reviewed by David Stafford

F.H. HINSLEY et al. British Intelligence in the Second World War: Its Influence on Strategy and Operations. Volume III, Part 1. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Pp. xvi, 690. $39.50 (US). Reviewed by Patrick Beesly

RICHARD HOUGH. The Great War at Sea, 1914–1918. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. Pp. xviii, 353. $25.00 (US). Reviewed by Jon Tetsuro Sumida

HERMIA OLIVER. The International Anarchist Movement in Late Victorian London. New York: St Martin's Press, 1983. Pp. 176. $25.00 (US). Reviewed by Haia Shpayer-Makov

STEWART A. STEHLIN. Weimar and the Vatican 1919–1933: German-Vatican Diplomatic Relations in the Interwar Years. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. Pp. 490. $50.00 (US). Reviewed by John S. Conway

GEORGE F.G. STANLEY. The War of 1812: Land Operations. Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, in collaboration with the Canadian War Museum, National Museum of Man, National Museums of Canada, 1983. Pp. 489. $24.95 (Can.); J.C.A. STAGG, Mr. Madison's War: Politics, Diplomacy, and Warfare in the Early American Republic, 1783–1830. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. Pp. 538. $49.00 (US). Reviewed by William Stinchcombe

JACOB TOURY. Die Jüdische Presse im Österreichischen Kaiserreich: Ein Beitrag zur Problematik der Akkulturation 1802–1918. New York: Leo Baeck Institute, 1983. Pp. 171. Reviewed by George O. Kent

GOTTFRIED NIEDHART, ed. Der Westen und die Sowjetunion: Einstellungen und Politik gegenüber der UdSSR in Euro pa und in den USA seit 1917. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1983. Pp. 372. DM 48. Reviewed by Gerhard L. Weinberg

DANIEL H. THOMAS. The Guarantee of Belgian Independence and Integrity in European Diplomacy, 1830's–1930's. Kingston, Rhode Island: D.H. Thomas Publishing, 1983. Pp. xv, 789. Reviewed by D. Stevenson

FRED v. CARSTENSEN. American Enterprise in Foreign Markets: Singer and International Harvester in Imperial Russia. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1984. Pp. vii, 289. $39.95 (US). Reviewed by John P. Mckay

JULIANNA PUSKAS. From Hungary to the United States, 1880–1914. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1982; distributed in North America by Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1983. Pp. 225. $24.25 (US). Reviewed by Janos M. Bak

ROGER CHICKERING. We Men Who Feel Most German: A Cultural Study of the Pan-German League 1886–1044. Boston: George Allen &; Unwin, 1983. Pp. 365. $29.95 (US). Reviewed by George L. Mosse

PETER KRTCDTE. Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists: Europe and the World Economy, 1500–1800, translated by V.R. Berghahn. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Pp. 191. $39.95 (US). Reviewed by Phyllis Deane

JAMES WILLIAM MORLEY, ed. The China Quagmire: Japan's Expansion on the Asian Continent 1933–1941. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983. Reviewed by Samuel C. Chu

ERIC HOBSBAWM, TERENCE RANGER, eds. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Pp. 320. $29.95 (US). Reviewed by Peter Stansky

AVI SHLAIM. The United States and the Berlin Blockade, 1948–1949: A Study in Crisis Decision-Making. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. Pp. xiii, 463. $38.00 (US). Reviewed by Robert A. Divine

JAMES CRACRAFT, ed. The Soviet Union Today: An Interpretative Guide. Chicago: The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 1983. Pp. ix, 348. $9.95 (US). Reviewed by Lawrence W. Lerner

M.J. TREBILCOCK, J.R.S. PRICHABD, T.J. COURCHENE, J. WHALLEY, eds. Federalism and the Canadian Economic Union. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983. $25.00 (Can.). Reviewed by Eric Kierans

PHILIP S. KHOURY. Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism: The Politics of Damascus, 1860–1920. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Pp. xi, 153. $34.50 (US). Reviewed by James Jankowski

PAUL MOSLEY. The Settler Economies: Studies in the Economic History of Kenya and Southern Rhodesia, 1900–1963. Cambridge and New York: Gambridge University Press, 1983. Pp. 289. $49.50 (US). Reviewed by Robert O. Collins     

Remarks on the Retreat of the North American Ice Sheet

A reply by two North American geographers to the preceding article presents some recent results of North American studies and suggests that the role of water bodies in influencing cyclogenesis is not universal. The Black Sea is cited as an example of a large water body that does not act as a major source of cyclonic activity. Other arguments are presented questioning the significance of the large proglacial lakes in influencing storm tracks near the margin of the ice sheet.     

British Assessments of Tipu Sultan’s Hill Forts in Northern Mysore, South India, 1802

Hundreds of early modern forts dot the South Indian landscape, but more is known about their art-historical aspects than how these fortifications were built, maintained, and used. The latter aspects are examined in a comparative analysis of six Mysore hill forts, using East India Company surveys that were prepared in 1802 shortly after British forces took command of these installations from Tipu Sultan’s garrisons. These highly detailed inventories show that the hill forts were poorly maintained, inadequately supplied, contained relatively few garrison buildings, and, from the British perspective at least, were inadequately armed to mount a successful defense. At the turn of the century, these forts were functionally obsolete, ill prepared to serve as supply depots, and strategically valuable only to quiet local populations and deny the use of such places to potential enemies.     

A HISTORY WITHOUT THE HISTORY

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