The Current Status of the Kenya Capsian

East Africa is home to a rich array of stone-tool traditions that span human prehistory. It is unsurprising, therefore, that the region attracted pioneer prehistorians in the early twentieth century, including L. S. B. Leakey, E. J. Wayland and T. P. O’Brien, who created the first cultural framework for East African prehistory during the 1930s. Although aspects of this framework remain relevant today, others have become misunderstood relics of an old classification system that hinders current research. This is particularly evident in the classification of a Later Stone Age (LSA) culture – the Kenya (East African) Aurignacian, later known as Kenya (East African) Capsian. Although this cultural entity was redressed during the 1970s and 1980s and redefined as the Eburran industry, there is still mystique surrounding the current status of the Kenya Capsian, its original scope and definition, the relationship with the Eburran and its position within a modern understanding of the East African LSA. This is largely due to paradigmatic shifts in researcher attitudes, leading to the use of the Eburran as a false proxy. It is necessary now to completely remove the term Kenya Capsian as an indication of similarity among the different LSA technologies. However, there also needs to be less emphasis on the importance of the Eburran and recognition that it is just one example of a multitude of diverse localised LSA industries. This will open the way for future research into the LSA and facilitate our greater understanding of recent prehistory in East Africa.     

A Place for Convicts: The Fremantle Lunatic Asylum,Western Australia and John Conolly’s “Ideal” Asylum

This article considers the mid to late nineteenth-century world of the Fremantle Lunatic Asylum, Western Australia. By examining the built environment of the asylum and the uses of spaces within its walls, it is possible to understand not just the experiences of the inmates, but to highlight attitudes towards the insane. The asylum was built under authority of the British Government, and later transferred to the Western Australian Government’s care. Reflecting on this volume’s theme of colonial institutions, this article will highlight the effects of center and periphery relationships on life within the asylum.     

No Italian Stalingrads. The C.G.I.L. and the working class in the northern industrial heartlands, 1945-1955

ABSTRACT

This article challenges conventional wisdom on the northern Italian industrial heartlands during the first decade after the Second World War. For there still exists a certain mythology about the post-war proletarian north as a region that was both intensely political and united in purpose. What this article demonstrates is that the ‘industrial triangle’ of Genoa, Milan and Turin was far more divided than historians have assumed. By revisiting the manifold (wildcat) strikes, trade union demonstrations, and factory occupations of the early post-war years, it shows the industrial north to be divided along both social and geographical lines. In doing so, it sheds fresh light on the series of defeats that the main Italian trade union confederation (C.G.I.L.) suffered in the late 1940s and early 1950s. It argues that these defeats were due as much to the explicit politicization of labour struggles and their exclusive focus on the interests of skilled workers as to the hostile socio-political climate in which the C.G.I.L. had to operate.     

Prehispanic Dugout Canoes in Mexico: A Typology Based on a Multidisciplinary Approach

Navigation implies a deep knowledge of the environment in which it is practised as well as the development of correlated technologies and techniques. In fact, sailing in lakes, rivers, along coasts or in high seas requires specific skills. This is why watercraft reflect the specific expertise of cultures in relation to the available resources and materials. Navigation as a means of movement and boats as modes of transportation is a well-documented topic in Europe, Asia and the Pacific Ocean, whether focusing on antiquity or the present. Nonetheless, in the New World, especially in Mesoamerica where the Aztec, Tarascan and Mayan Empires flourished, indigenous maritime history has been thoroughly under-investigated. This article explores the first prehispanic dugout canoes of the region, based on a multidisciplinary approach for the Mexico and Pátzcuaro Basins, in the Late Postclassic period (AD 1325-1521). For the first time, a typology of these dugout types is proposed, with a discussion of the importance of dugout canoes as a means of transportation in Mesoamerican civilizations, where wheels and draught animals did not exist.     

Unpacking Neoliberal Archaeological Control of Ancient Indigenous Heritage

Archaeologists often discuss the First People of the Western Hemisphere (the Americas) and their descendants, as Immigrants from Asia or Solutreans from France. In this paper, I discuss how archaeologists as handmaidens of the late modern state control the past in the present. This control keeps Indigenous people of the Western Hemisphere as recent migrants on a global history time scale. Arguing against recent initial migration time frames to the Western Hemisphere, I discuss the Indigenous Palaeolithic of the Americas; and what an acknowledgement of the ancient past may bring to contemporary Indigenous communities.     

Trade and Power in Ancient Egypt: Middle Egypt in the Late Third/Early Second Millennium BC

Middle Egypt provides a unique insight into the organization of power, politics, economy, and culture at the turn of the third millennium BC. The apparently easy integration of this region into the reunified monarchy of king Mentuhotep II (2055–2004 BC) was possible because the interests and the local lineages of potentates were preserved. Trade and access and/or control of international exchange networks were important sources of wealth and power then. And Middle Egypt appears as a crossroads of diverse populations, as a hub of political and economic power, as a crucial node of exchanges through the Nile Valley, and as a power center whose rulers provided support to the monarchy in exchange of local autonomy and considerable political influence at the Court. In the new conditions of early second millennium, potentates from Middle Egypt succeeded in occupying a unique advantageous position, not matched elsewhere in Egypt, because of the concentration of wealth, trade routes, new technologies, political power, and autonomy in the territories they ruled.