Using mineral magnetism to characterise ironworking and to detect its evidence in peat bogs

An experimental approach has been used to establish whether medieval ironworking activity could be identified in peat bogs using mineral magnetic measurements. The research project comprised three elements. First, magnetic susceptibility and remanence properties were obtained for materials from an experimental iron smelt, in a furnace of medieval design, and from material collected during the excavation of the medieval bloomery at Llwyn Du in Coed y Brenin, Snowdonia. Materials sampled and measured included charcoal, aerial dust, roasted bog ore and furnace dust. A second experiment determined whether small amounts of aerial dust released from the furnace could be detected in accumulating peat samples. This was achieved by sprinkling small quantities of dust on to a constructed ’peat core’ that had no detectable magnetic signature prior to the addition of the dust. The application rates used were within the range expected to fall on a peat bog located close to a medieval furnace. Thirdly, mineral magnetic measurements were made on a peat core collected close to the Llwyn Du bloomery. The results confirm that roasted bog ore, aerial dust released from and dust accumulating in the furnace after a smelt, are magnetically detectable. The aerial dust and roasted bog ore produced enhanced susceptibility and remanence signatures in the constructed ’peat core’ experiments. Peaks in IRM_(0.88T) and HIRM were measured in the Llwyn Du peat monolith and appear to correlate with a time when the medieval bloomery was operational. The results presented here suggest that it is possible to identify evidence of past ironworking in peat bogs using mineral magnetic measurements and that the signatures remain well preserved in the peat record even after burial for several hundred years.     

Women's Organizations,Voluntarism, and Self‐Financing in Solomon Islands: a Participant Perspective

Arguing that the capacity to organize is not foreign to Solomon Islands women, this paper demonstrates their resourcefulness, resilience, and significant but neglected national potential by focusing on a key domain of women's practice and management expertise ‐ women's groups, organizations, and associations, most of which are church‐based, and government programs or projects directed to women. The paper surveys the establishment and operation of different categories of women's groupings before and since independence in 1978. It highlights the commitment to voluntarism and self‐financing that has enabled many groups and organizations to function and even flourish despite recent armed conflict and the resultant near collapse of the economy and the state, especially in the capital, Honiara. It exemplifies the priority shift which has seen many women and their organizations supplement the traditional concerns of home economics, health, education, and community service with overt attention to questions of economic development, political participation, and human rights. The paper concludes by considering the problems facing women's groupings in Solomon Islands, including those generated by women's own attitudes and behaviour as well as gendered and other external constraints.     

Recent research in west Mexican archaeology

The last decade has seen the greatest increase in archaeological research in western Mexico since the 1940s. Unlike previously heralded renewals, this one is accompanied by widespread skepticism of the dominant culture-historical paradigm linking west Mexico to the rest of Mesoamerica, to the American Southwest, and to South America. Current research offers substantive new data and interpretations bearing on issues such as the definition of Mesoamerica, the role of South American long distance contacts, the human ecology of highland lakes, the role of river systems in Mesoamerican prehistory, and the nature/role of prehispanic elite exchanges.     

Some Recently Rediscovered Analyses of Chinese Bronzes from Oxford

We report here the rediscovery of the chemical analyses of approximately 540 Chinese bronze objects, carried out in RLAHA in the late 1950s by optical emission spectrometry. Although largely of historical interest, they do in fact even now approximately double the number analyses of Chinese bronze objects that contain data on both major and minor elements. In fact, the other major equivalent data sets, from the Freer Gallery and the Sackler Collection, are of approximately the same vintage. We attempt to evaluate the quality of the data, and address a controversy that appeared in the literature during the 1960s and 1970s about the value of arsenic measurements in Chinese bronzes as an indicator of authenticity.     

Settlement and Trade from AD 500 to 1800 at Angoche,Mozambique

Angoche was an important historic trading port on the northern Mozambique coast. A maritime archaeological survey was undertaken of the islands and mainland to study Swahili trade, clarify the sequence of settlement development and record the exploitation of resources during the medieval and post-medieval periods. Previous archaeological investigations have revealed local ceramics from the early second millennium AD and imports from the late fifteenth century. According to oral traditions and ancient sources, Angoche’s growth is associated with the arrival of coastal settlers from Kilwa in 1485. The survey revealed evidence for occupation dating from c. AD 500 and trading evidence from the late first millennium AD. Artefacts from the thirteenth to sixteenth century on the islands are similar to those found at Kilwa and Sofala, which shows a link to Kilwa earlier than the oral traditions and the name of one of the Angoche Islands ‘Quilua’, is Kilwa in Portuguese. The islands are well resourced in terms of rice, mangrove wood, seafood and farmland and offer sheltered inlets and access to the coastal trade route. The name of Angoche relates to a port of call and the presence of ninth-tenth-century- storage vessels from southern Iran supports this theory. Traded glass and ceramic artifacts and beads increase from the late medieval period revealing that Angoche became an important and wealthy entrepôt. The lack of coral limestone and reef coral, on the sandy Angoche Islands, indicates some building materials would have had to have been imported. Although many buildings would have been made of wood, some stone ruins are likely to have been demolished and burnt to make lime. The original stratigraphy of many sites has been destroyed by aeolian and marine processes but the survey has shown that valuable information on settlement location and ethnographic practices can still be recovered.     

Lead isotopic analyses of copper ores in the Early Bronze Age central Hexi Corridor,north-west China

This paper explores the possible provenance of ores employed for metallurgical production during the Early Bronze Age in the central Hexi Corridor of north-west China. In total, 78 pieces of copper (Cu) ore samples were collected from five Early Bronze Age sites and one Cu deposit site (the Beishantang Cu deposit) in the Heihe River region of the central corridor. These sites were dated to the late Machang (4100–4000 bp ), Xichengyi (4000–3700 bp ), Qijia (4000–3600 bp ) and Siba (3700–3400 bp ) cultures. After comparing with published lead (Pb) isotopic data from other possible Cu deposits in north-west China, the results show that the Cu ores collected from the Early Bronze Age sites were most likely derived from the adjacent Beishan Cu deposit. More intriguingly, for the first time in Hexi Corridor, a dozen Cu ores were discovered containing highly radiogenic Pb. Though fundamentally different from those in the Central Plains, they illustrate a possible new type of Cu used in Bronze Age western China, and the first-hand materials are significant for further understanding the provenance of raw metals for metallurgical production in the prehistoric Hexi Corridor.     

From Beyond the Grave and Across the Ocean: Washington Irving and the Problem of Being a Questioning American, 1809–20

This article is a reconsideration of Washington Irving’s early career between the productions of his first two major works: A History of New York (1809) and The Sketch Book (1819–20). His life and writings in that period are treated as a study in the individual problem of being a ‘questioning American,’ specifically a questioning American writer, in the new republic, and as a broader critique of the developing new nation. Specifically it places those writings in dialogue with the dominant Jeffersonian narrative of a glorious national future. It thus rediscovers Irving as a critical alternative witness to this important period in American history and the entwined attempt to critique his country and to come to terms with it as the central, underappreciated theme both in neglected writings (his contributions to the Analectic Magazine (1812–15)) and familiar tales (Rip van Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow).     

LATE GALLEYS: The Fredriksvern Naval Shipyard and the coastal defence in Norway 1750–1814

From the early 18th century the Mediterranean galley experienced a new golden age in the Baltic Sea, as it was well adapted to the shallow sea with the islands and skerries found there. In Norway the Fredriksvern naval shipyard was founded in 1750 to build a galley fleet. For various reasons progress was slow, and when the galley fleet finally was built in the 1760s, it was probably the last one in Europe. New and more efficient inshore vessels were soon developed in the neighbouring countries, but they were not put into use in Norway in the 18th century. The explanation for Norway’s poor performance was probably too much peace: when Denmark-Norway became involved in the Napoleonic Wars, naval development was dramatically improved.     

Beyond the Stone Town: Maritime Architecture at Fourteenth–Fifteenth Century Songo Mnara, Tanzania

The towns of the Swahili coast of East Africa are widely acknowledged as the remains of a maritime society whose relationship with the ocean was fundamental to their economy and identity. Yet research that links the terrestrial environments of the towns to their adjacent maritime landscapes is rare, and urgently required in the light of marine erosional processes unmitigated by human actions. In the Kilwa archipelago of southern Tanzania, survey of the coastal foreshore has documented maritime architecture??particularly a series of coral-built causeways??that serve to link the medieval towns of this area to coastal resources and to expand the limits of the settlements themselves. This paper reports on survey recovering these causeways on Songo Mnara Island, putting the structures into context as part of the broader spatial manifestation of the island??s fourteenth?Cfifteenth century town. Several possible uses of the causeways are discussed, including functional explanations linked to the exploitation of oceanic resources, and more social reasons of territoriality and spatial demarcation.