Remnants of Scottish stone architecture in Nova Scotia

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, thousands of Scottish emigrants travelled to Canada. This paper concerns those buildings that were designed and constructed by Scottish settlers, utilising skills and materials transported from their homeland. The research concerns the extent to which buildings of those early generations of settler might still be intact, with specific reference to selected case studies from Nova Scotia. One is faced with still intact examples of Scottish architectural heritage, located thousands of miles from Scotland. This has interesting and important implications for the manner in which we value, care for and understand meaning within the built heritage.     

World Heritage as a Model for Citizenship: the case of Cyprus

This paper explores the imaginative spaces in which world heritage is constructed and consumed: on the one hand, as the landmarks of a 'global landscape' mediated through the virtual mobility of cyberspace, essentially freed from 'place' or location; on the other hand, as the place-bound focus of nation-building projects, where the narratives of 'destiny' of nationalist mythology confront the serendipity of modern state boundaries. The paper links these two aspects of 'World Heritage' to two contrasting models of citizenship, one of which is rooted in the ideal of an inclusive democratic world citizenry, whilst the other is tied to more exclusive notions of citizenship attached to membership of specific nation-states and riven by boundaries of ethnicity, religion, state and class. Taking the case of Cyprus, the paper examines the ways in which these discourses of the global and the national, of heritage and citizenship, are mobilised by different groups as symbolic resources in the politics of this divided island.     

Frontiers of Contact: Bioarchaeology of Spanish Florida

The arrival of Europeans in the New World had profound and long-lasting results for the native peoples. The record for the impact of this fundamental change in culture, society, and biology of Native Americans is well documented historically. This paper reviews the biological impact of the arrival of Europeans on native populations via the study of pre- and postcontact skeletal remains in Spanish Florida, the region today represented by coastal Georgia and northern Florida. The postcontact skeletal series, mostly drawn from Roman Catholic mission sites, are among the most comprehensive in the Americas, providing a compelling picture of adaptation and stress in this setting. Study of paleopathology, dental and skeletal indicators of physiological stress, stable isotope (carbon and nitrogen) analysis, tooth microwear, and skeletal morphology (cross-sectional geometry) reveals major alterations in quality of life and lifestyle. The bioarchaeological record indicates a general deterioration in health, declining dietary diversity and nutritional quality, and increasing workload in the contact period. The impact of contact in Spanish Florida appears to have been more dramatic in comparison with other regions, which likely reflects the different nature of contact relations in this setting versus other areas (e.g., New England, New France). The bioarchaeological record represents an important information source for understanding the dynamics of biocultural change resulting from colonization and conquest.     

Globalization and the Rise of City-regions

A world-wide mosaic of large city-regions seems to be over-riding (though is not effacing entirely) an earlier core-periphery system of spatial organization. The economic dynamics of these city-regions are analysed with particular emphasis on the ways in which they tend to generate increasing-returns effects and competitive advantages for local producers. The managerial tasks that these city-regions face raise many new issues about local economic development policy and institution building in the interests of social order. These issues lead on to further questions about democracy and citizenship in the global mosaic of city-regions as well as in the new world system as a whole.     

Dynamics of Social Complexity in Early Nineteenth-Century British Fur-Trade Posts

During the early nineteenth century, the Hudson's Bay and the North West Companies controlled much of western Canada. Both companies employed hierarchical command structures that influenced all elements of social life within the posts. Both companies confronted a significant level of interrank tension, and sought to reinforce authority figures using imported wealth items and privileges. However the enormous transportation costs made it prohibitively expensive to supply many of these status items to junior officers stationed at remote outposts. As a result, new informally derived means of symbolizing and defending social position were negotiated using techniques and commodities that were unaffected by transportation difficulties.