Extraction and sequencing of human and Neanderthal mature enamel proteins using MALDI-TOF/TOF MS

We report here the first results of a method to extract and sequence mature enamel proteins from modern human and Neanderthal tooth enamel. Using MALDI-TOF/TOF mass spectrometry and a combination of direct sequencing and peptide mass mapping we have sequenced a peptide from the tyrosine-rich amelogenin peptide (TRAP) of the X isoform of the amelogenin protein for modern and recent human samples. We also report our results from two Neanderthal enamel samples where we were also able to recover fragments of the TRAP protein, which had a similar sequence to the modern human samples.     

Double Displacement: Western Women's Return Home from Japanese Internment in the Second World War

This article examines the homecoming of Western women from Japanese internment camps at the end of the Second World War. It focuses on British women returning to the United Kingdom, but makes reference to women from other Allied nations such as the United States, Australia and the Netherlands. The paper argues that interned women posed contradictions to gendered understandings of wartime experience and that homecoming further exacerbated this ambiguity. Return from imprisonment exposed the dual meaning of home as the natural realm for women and a national space. Women internees had been away from both and were subjected to control by non‐white men; responses to their liberation reflected these tensions. Homecoming prompted questions about released women's femininity and sexual integrity, but they faced even more difficulty having their war experiences recognised as part of a national story about war.     

Editorial

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Editorial

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Editorial

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

The Beasts At Large – Perennial Questions and New Paradigms for Caribbean Translocation Research. Part II: Mammalian Introductions in Cultural Context

Looking to clarify outstanding questions about human-animal dynamics in the pre-Columbian Caribbean, archaeologists have recently renewed investigation into the sociocultural context of mammal translocations to the islands. In this second instalment of a three-article series, I examine Amerindian ethnophoresy, that is, the process of anthropogenic species dispersal and its associated cultural practices, drawing on archaeological, ethnographic, and ethnohistoric evidence. Building on the ethnozoogeographic baselines established in Part I, I consider the tangible and intangible roles of introduced mammals, with particular attention given to subsistence, status, symbolic and ritual dimensions. I discuss enduring speculation over the management and incipient domestication of these species and its broader significance. Collectively, these topics are important because they inform explanation of the cause, extent and consequences of non-native animal introductions and allow us to understand translocation as an adaptive response to the natural and cultural environment. I conclude that resolution of the managed/domesticated status of non-native animals, in particular, constitutes the most critical research area in Caribbean ethnophoresy since this bears directly on the environmental impact and ecological legacy of mammal introductions in the region. This last topic is addressed in Part III of the series.     

Barbadian Gothic: The Moving Coffins of the Chase Vault in Socio-Cultural Context

Abstract

The Chase family vault (Oistins, Barbados) is widely known as the setting of a macabre nineteenth-century story of moving coffins. On several occasions between 1812 and 1821, on opening the sealed vault to add a new burial, the neatly stacked coffins were found scattered. This legend has never been examined within its contemporary setting, including the Gothic literary and cultural movement. This article seeks to show that the episode reveals much about the negotiation of power in an island society on the edge of slave rebellion, where the planter class were fearful of the enslaved peoples’ continued practice of the banned spiritual and healing rituals known as Obeah. The article further examines how the story reflects notions of otherness, death, materiality, and memory in early nineteenth-century Barbados, where the ordered Protestant world of the planters clashed with what they perceived as the elemental worldview of the enslaved African and Afro-Barbadian population.