Communities of Knowledge: Teaching and Learning in Maritime Archaeology

This paper explores the points of contact and divergence between education, training and experience in maritime archaeology. In particular, it is proposed that whilst it is worth developing McGrail’s (Studies in maritime archaeology. British Archaeological Reports, Oxford, 1997) discussion of what should be included when we teach Maritime archaeology, more might be gained from moving beyond individual opinions of instructors. As such, this paper includes an exploration of both my own answers to the questions offered in the call for papers and those of past and present Southampton students. What emerges from this comparison is that by focusing too closely on the specifics of what is (or should be) taught, we miss out on what students actually gain from courses and more broadly what we gain as a community.     

Capitalist Expansion and the Decline of Common Property Ecosystems in China,Vietnam and India

This article identifies some of the multiple processes of capitalist development through which access to common property resources and their utility for communities are undermined. Three sites in upland Asia demonstrate how patterns of exclusion are mediated by the unique and selective trajectories through which capital expands, resulting in a decline of common property ecosystems. The process is mediated by economic stress, ecological degradation and political processes such as state‐sanctioned enclosure. The first case study from Shaoguan, South China, indicates how rapid capitalist industrialization has depleted the aquatic resource base, undermining the livelihoods of fishing households yet to be absorbed into the urban working class. At the second site, in Phu Yen, Vietnam, capitalist development is limited. However, indirect articulations between capitalism on the lowlands and the peasant economy of the uplands is driving the commercialization of agriculture and fishing and undermining the utility of communal river and lake ecosystems. In the third site, Buxa in West Bengal, India, there is only selective capitalist development, but patterns of resource extraction established during the colonial period and contemporary neoliberal ‘conservation’ agendas have directly excluded communities from forest resources. Restrictions on access oblige them to contribute subsidized labour to local enterprises. The article thus shows how communities which are differentially integrated into the global economy are excluded from natural resources through complex means.     

St Columba and the convention at Druimm Cete: peace and politics at seventh‐century Iona

Attendance at the ‘convention of kings’ at Druimm Cete in north‐east Ireland is one of the most famous episodes in the career of St Columba or Colum Cille, who died in 597. Discussion of the significance of this shadowy summit, largely informed by unreliable late evidence, has hitherto focused upon what (may have) transpired there between kings based in Ireland and Scotland. The result has been the neglect of the hagiographical dimension of the presentation of Druimm Cete in our principal source, Adomnán's Vita Sancti Columbae, composed c.700. Analysis of this material shows that Adomnán's information about the convention came from his principal source, composed some sixty years earlier. It reveals moreover that Druimm Cete assumed prominence within the Columban dossier in the 640s for what it represented, rather than because of what actually happened there. Once the hagiographical agenda of Vita Sancti Columbae and its principal source is restored to its rightful place in evaluating the text, it emerges that several of its best‐known stories – including the story of Columba's ordination of a Scottish king – are much more problematic as witnesses to sixth‐century history than is conventionally supposed. As scholars begin to lose their grip upon the historical Columba, however, they grow better able to grasp seventh‐century political history in north‐east Ireland and Gaelic Scotland.