New investigations of the Göllüdağ obsidian lava flows system: a multi-disciplinary approach

The Göllüda? obsidian lava flow system is relatively complex. More than ten different obsidian outcrops and knapping workshops have been identified around this volcano. Their importance for long and short distances obsidian supply has already been demonstrated.One of the main problem encountered when studying the Göllüda? obsidian flows, is the great chemical similarity of some of them. The use of the geochemical approach to solve the problems of obsidian trade around the Göllüda? is therefore insufficient. A multi-disciplinary program joining archaeology, geochemistry and geomorphology, was thus started to understand the relationships between the different obsidian flows and to draw the pattern of the Göllüda? obsidian trade.Our archaeological and geomorphologic approach will help us to understand which obsidian outcrops were available during the Palaeolithic and Neolithic periods.Also our geomorphologic approach, linked to intensive geochemical analyses, will help us to understand the spatial variability of the geochemistry of the obsidian outcrops. Lithic technology will also give information about the different knapping methods used at the workshops.     

Spain’s Military Campaigns in Sardinia and Sicily (1717–1720) According to Jaime Miguel de Guzmán-Dávalos,Marquis of la Mina

The Colección de cuadros y planos sobre de Cerdeña y Sicilia en los anõs 1717, 1720 is an archive of military maps complementing the Memorias written by Jaime Miguel de Guzmán-Dávalos, second marquis of la Mina, who had participated in these campaigns. The Colección illustrates some of the most important events of the Italian campaigns against the Quadruple Alliance of Britain, France, Austria and the Dutch Republic (1717–1720). Comparison of the maps and other drawings with details in la Mina’s Memorias allows us to clarify his main objective in compiling the text, which was to record the operations faithfully for use in military education.     

Bronze Age boundaries and social exchange in north-west Cyprus

Summary.   During the Late Bronze Age a number of towns engaged in copper production and overseas trade arose throughout the coastal regions of Cyprus. While some of these towns were located within a few kilometres of major ore deposits in the Troodos Mountains, others were situated much farther away, and presumably acquired their copper supplies through extensive networks of exchange. This paper addresses the question of how such networks may have been structured in north-western and north central Cyprus, within and adjacent to the research area of the Sydney Cyprus Survey Project. Based on our analyses of site locational factors, we propose the co-existence of at least two distinct networks of copper procurement and transport. Consideration of the finds from settlement and mortuary sites in the northern Troodos and Mesaoria plain suggests a pattern of hierarchical exchange relations between coastal and inland regions.     

Colonial Emulation,Competition and Opportunism: A Twentieth-Century Spanish Perspective on the British and French ‘Empire Projects’

ABSTRACT

Through the views of Francisco Franco’s major adviser on African Affairs, this paper reveals a hitherto neglected aspect of the long-standing interaction between competing ‘imperial projects’ in the twentieth century. Tomás García Figueras’s (1892–1981) speeches, writings and personal archive provide a long-term and well-informed Spanish perspective on the British and French colonial systems, offering us a model to make sense of three major aspects of inter-imperial relations: emulation, competition, and opportunism. Through this insight into the dynamics of imperial interaction, and the ever-evolving dialogues and exchanges between ‘empire projects’ from around the European peninsula, this article provides some key elements to answer the long-standing question of what motivates empires to expand, adapt, or contract. It illuminates the ways in which officials engaged in the day-to-day running of European empires looked at each other, in search for examples and counter-examples, emulation or, simply, opportunities. Crucially, it illustrates how ‘empire projects’ of varying clout interacted with each other, within the limits of realpolitik but well beyond linguistic obstacles, as the multilingual material assembled in the García Figueras archive clearly attests. It also charts, among national and socio-cultural circles hitherto neglected, the evolution in thinking about colonialism and decolonisation throughout the twentieth century.