Temperature,compression and fragmentation: an experimental analysis to assess the impact of taphonomic processes on charcoal preservation

This paper explores how mechanical properties of different South Asian tree taxa might influence charred wood fragmentation and the composition of charcoal assemblages retrieved from archaeological contexts. The dataset is composed of selected plant species that were collected in Gujarat (Northern India) in September 2007 as part of the North Gujarat Archaeological Project. The taxa analysed represent the most common wood species found in the arid thorn scrubland formation in South Asia and are among the most abundant identified in Neolithic and Chalcolithic archaeological sites in this area. The specimens have been measured and subsequently charred at three different temperatures, under constant conditions. Afterwards, their resistance to compression has been measured on two planes, parallel and perpendicular to the direction of fibres, using a Hounsfield 5-kN machine. The tests were performed in order to understand the different response to compressive stress of wood that has been subject to a range of thermal degradations. The standardised treatment applied to the samples has permitted the comparison of results and the delineation of simple correlations and divergences among the species analysed. Furthermore, the utilisation of a relatively simple operating protocol easily allows the addition of further data in the future. The applied protocol was specifically designed to answer archaeological questions. Therefore, even though from a material science point of view some of the measurements were not taken according to the prevailing standard procedures, it offers valuable data for anthracological research applied to archaeology in arid zones.     

Turning Point? The Volatile Geographies of Taxation

This article argues that the geographies of taxation offer an important but neglected insight into changes taking place in the nature of the contemporary state in the context of globalisation. Following Schumpeter's analysis of the “tax state”, the paper argues that, historically, the theory and practice of fiscal space are fundamental both to state form and to the possibility of political and social institutions. Despite this, the complexity and fluidity inherent in fiscal space has been obscured by the dominant normative conception of “the” fiscal state. As the concept of “fiscal sovereignty” becomes less and less salient in practice in the context of economic globalisation, it remains a powerful ideological concept for state governance. This paper reviews the primary contemporary accounts of fiscal space across a range of disciplinary contexts and scales of governance. Despite the expectation and or desire for some form of “fiscal globalisation” on the part of commentators, in practice what we see is an increased centralisation of state fiscal control coupled with a creeping individuation and privatisation of fiscal responsibility. This radical respatialisation of fiscal space has profound implications both for the state itself and for any prospect of the creation of a global “public domain” founded on a global fisc.     

Crafting,Cooking, and Constructing Histories: Women and the Politics of Everyday Life along the Falémé River (ca. AD 1000–1900)

Recent archaeological research in Africa has moved to illuminate the dynamic ways in which cultural identities such as ethnicity and caste have intersected with regional histories. Along these same lines, this paper focuses on the roles of women within the processes of frontier and periphery that shaped, and were shaped by, daily life within the precolonial landscape of Upper Senegal. Focusing on historical and archaeological evidence from past settlements along the Falémé River, this paper explores how the production of pottery vessels, and their use within domestic routines of food storage and preparation, may have played into political economic relations between and beyond local communities during the second millennium AD. Insofar as these craft and culinary practices lay within the gendered domain of women, they add insight into the contributions of craftswomen and female household makers to local and regional histories.     

Pure Minds,Pure Bodies,Pure Lips: Religious Ideology and the Juvenile Convict Institutions at Carters' Barracks and Point Puer

During the transportation period, Britain sent 25,000 convict boys to Australia. While the proportion of juveniles was fairly low for the first thirty years, by the mid‐1820s increasing numbers were sent, with the growing argument that transportation might affect a reformation amongst the boys. Religious ideology was central to that argument. Institutions were built in Sydney and Port Arthur where boys would be taught to read, work, and fear God. This article considers the interrelationship between the authorities, the clergy, and the boys at Carters' Barracks and Point Puer, suggesting that religion and religious penal practices created dynamic points of interaction. When it came to being “reformed,” the boys were anything but passive recipients. Religious penal practice was far more than just an instrument of the hegemonic powers. Instead, it was a dynamic discursive and political space characterised at different times by resistance, compliance, and subversion of the areas of learning, cleanliness, and language. This article therefore considers not merely the religious practices of the penal institutions but also the varied manner in which the boys responded to those practices.