Inferring Human Behaviors from Isotopic Analyses of Rat Diet: a Critical Review and Historical Application

Rat (Rattus spp.) bone collagen stable isotope values are often assumed to reflect an average of food stuffs that were available to archaeological populations. This paper considers the feasibility of using stable isotope evidence from rat remains as a source of proxy information for human food-related social, economic, and sensorial behaviors. First, a literature review of archaeological and modern ecological rat isotope work reveals that, while rat dietary signatures are often a reasonable proxy for human food waste, they will not always record an unbiased average of foods which are available in a given environment. Second, an overview of ethological, biological, and environmental factors that can influence rat diets is given from the perspective of archaeological bone chemistry, to help identify factors that require explicit and critical consideration when rat stable isotope data is taken as a proxy for human food-related behaviors. Finally, rat stable isotope values are considered to provide new evidence about the social and economic responses of an important historical English fishing community at Ferryland (CgAf-02) to conflict and political turmoil at the turn of the eighteenth century. These results also highlight how information on rat diets can provide a counterpoint to other common faunal isotope approaches that focus on dogs and pigs as a proxy for human dietary behaviors.     

Short notices

Bonnafous, A., Plassard, F., and Vulin, B., eds., Circuler Demain (DATAR/Éditions de l'Aube, 1993), 191pp., 95R, ISBN 2 87678 126 3

Dioudonnat, P.‐M., Les 700 rédacteurs de ‘Je suis partout’ 1930–1944 (Sedopolis, 1993), 107pp., 240F., ISBN 2 904177 16 7

Furet, F., Revolutionary France 1770–1880 (Blackwell, 1992), 630pp., £40.00, ISBN 0 631 17029 4

Hainsworth, P., ed., The Extreme Right in Europe and the USA (Pinter, 1992), 320pp., £45.00, ISBN 0 86187 790 X

Macchia, G., L'Ange de la nuit. Sur Proust, trans, from the Italian by Marie‐France Merger, Paul Bédarida and Mario Fusco (Gallimard, 1993), 269pp., 130F., ISBN 2 07 072885 4

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Service d'Information et de Diffusion du Premier Ministre, La politique de la France, aoÛt 1991‐juillet 1992 (La Documentation française, 1993), 165pp., 70F., ISBN 2 11 002915 3

Teich, M., and Porter, R., eds., The National Question in Europe in Historical Context (CUP, 1993), 343pp., £40.00, ISBN 0 521 36441 8 (hbk), £13.95, ISBN 0 521 36713 1 (pbk)     

Re/negotiating “suspicion”: exploring the construction of self in Irish migrants' memories of the 1996 Manchester bomb

On 15 June 1996 the Provisional IRA exploded a 3000 lb bomb in the city of Manchester, home to a large Irish community. This article uses oral history to explore the distinct ways in which two male Irish migrants, both of whom settled in the Manchester area during the post-war period, recall and negotiate their experiences of the bomb and its aftermath. Focusing on how memory production is shaped though interactions between different cultural forms and interior psychic processes, the article uses memories of the bomb to explore how the culture of suspicion generated around Irishness in Britain during “The Troubles” could be productive of distinct forms of Irish migrant subjectivity.