The Belgammel Ram,a Hellenistic‐Roman Bronze Proembolion Found off the Coast of Libya: test analysis of function,date and metallurgy,with a digital reference archive

The Belgammel Ram was found off the coast of Libya in 1964, and examined during 2008–9. The following techniques were used: surface non‐contact digitizing using a laser scanner, reflectance transformation imaging using polynomial texture mapping and hemi‐spherical harmonics, digital photogrammetry with dense surface modelling, structured light optical scanning, and X‐ray fluorescence analysis. For internal structure the ram was examined by X‐radiography and 3‐D X‐ray tomography. Metallurgical composition was studied by micro‐drilling and subjecting the samples to scanning electron microscope X‐ray micro‐analysis, micro X‐ray fluorescence and X‐ray backscatter. The lead isotope composition was analysed. The alloy has average percentage composition Cu = 86.9, Sn = 6.3, Pb = 6.6, and Zn = < 0.10. The Belgammel Ram is probably a Hellenistic‐Roman proembolion from a small military vessel or tesseraria. The archived data are at the Faculty of Engineering and Environment, Engineering Sciences, Material Data Centre, University of Southampton ( muvis@soton.ac.uk ).     

Nested assemblages: migrants,war heritage,informal learning and national identities

ABSTRACT

This article examines relations between Anzac heritage and Australian national identity, among migrant visitors to the Australian War Memorial (AWM). What meaning could a story derived from Australian involvement in the First World War have to migrants who moved to Australia after the Second World War? Participants in qualitative interviews were eleven first-generation Australians, whose countries of birth were England, Greece, Ireland, New Zealand, Philippines, Scotland, South Africa and Sri Lanka, with parental countries of birth extending to Austria, Germany, India and Japan. Drawing on sociomaterial assemblage theory, the findings illustrate the concept of nested assemblages. At increasing scalar levels, the migrants form visitor-AWM assemblages, they may (or may not) feel part of a national Anzac heritage assemblage, and as migrants they are entangled in multiple national assemblages concurrently. Assemblages pertaining to family, faith, learning and memorialising were additional networks at play. Mapping interrelations amongst these assemblages showed migrants as actively gathering and interpreting heritage, sometimes as the enactment of national identity and at other times as the performance of informal, lifelong learning. The findings have importance to institutions seeking to be responsive to diverse and changing populations, particularly those wrestling with tensions around national identity.     

Palaeoenvironments, the archaeological record and cereal pollen detection at Clickimin, Shetland, Scotland

The Loch of Clickimin, Shetland, is well known for its broch and associated monuments supposedly of the Bronze and Iron Ages, although the former date is disputed. Pollen, diatom and sedimentological investigations permit fresh insights into the landscape and economic impacts of those who constructed the monuments, reveal that the environs of the site experienced environmental change from Neolithic times onward and provide the first Holocene radiocarbon dates from the immediate locality. The broch-building period witnessed a continuation of pre-existing pastoral husbandry for which heather burning may have exacerbated the natural spread of blanket peat. Initially, no evidence was adduced for local arable activity in the present investigation, and this was thought to be consistent possibly with the low numbers of excavated querns and the absence of cereal macrofossil finds when compared with other Shetland broch sites. The application of ‘rapid scanning’ techniques, however, led to the discovery of a consistent cereal-type pollen representation from Bronze Age times onwards. The discrepancies between the palaeoenvironmental evidence and the environmental and palaeoeconomic inferences made by the excavator of the site are explored. Evidence is presented that both supports and contradicts previous assumptions surrounding an important archaeological site.     

Meat–Eating,Masculinity, and Renunciation in India: A Gandhian Grammar of Diet

This paper focuses on the writings and the autobiography of one of the century’s most prominent vegetarians, who was almost as noted (or notorious) for his alimentary and sexual experiments as for his political ones. A consideration of diet is, I argue, in many ways central rather than marginal to a Gandhian gendered ethics and a Gandhian politics. The accounts of the eating and abjuration of meat in the Gandhian oeuvre can serve as a useful point of entry into the investigation of two linked loci of Gandhi’s dietary practices: the question of meat and modernity, and the question of meat in the context of the patriarchal vegetarian household. These accounts are fascinating for their profoundly conflictual ethical logic, and they help establish the intimate and unexpected links among meat–eating, modern formations of masculine identity, and the gendered dynamics of the patriarchal Hindu household. Using the evidence of Gandhi’s autobiography, correspondence, journalism, and public addresses, in conjunction with the writings of his contemporaries, I map therefore a trajectory of his gastropolitics, from the carnophilic mandate of the early years (during which he associated meat–eating with nationalist duty and access to a kind of culinary virility), to the diasporic discovery of vegetarianism in London, and finally to the carefully elaborated alimentary rigours and public fasts of the later years. All of this helps to underline how profoundly somatic Gandhi’s ‘experiments in truth’ were, and how pronounced was his belief that the purification of the body was inseparable from the purification of the mind necessary for swaraj (self–rule).     

18th- and 19th-century shipyards at the south-east entrance to the West India Docks, London

Archaeological fieldwork in 1997 on the Isle of Dogs, at the south-east entrance to the West India Docks, recovered evidence of 17th- to 19th-century shipyards, associated activities and foreign trade. Reused timbers may be the remains of the 17th-century Rolt's yard. Reclamation along the natural inlet was accompanied by the construction of a timber dry dock probably in the late 18th century. This soon fell out of use and was filled in with the construction of new dry docks to the south in 1806 by Thomas Pitcher. Much of the debris dating to the first half of the 19th century from ship repairing and building and from a range of ancillary crafts, together with ceramics from Iberia and the Far East, probably came from Pitcher's yard.     

Microbiology of Concretions, Sediments and Mechanisms Influencing the Preservation of Submerged Archaeological Artifacts

Research conducted at deep-ocean ship wreck sites in the North Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea and in the Gulf of Mexico have revealed that microorganisms play a significant role in both the preservation and loss of submerged artifacts. Research to be reported concentrates on the influence of microbiologically induced concretions on the survival of maritime artifacts. Rusticles, a common form of concretion, have been found to provide valuable information to archeology (Garzke et al. 1997, Proceedings of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers). The role of rusticles in the preservation of recalcitrant materials such as coal and glass fragments that become embedded within these growths, as well as forensic chemical analysis can be used to determine the nature of goods or munitions being carried by the ship at the time of its sinking, and will form examples.     

Scottish Rights and ‘Centralisation’ in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

Abstract. This article will address the assumption that the essential definition of nationalism is parliamentary political. By highlighting the solitary Scottish nationalist movement in the mid-nineteenth century, the National Association for the Vindication of Scottish Rights, this article asks whether a ‘centralised’ state for the Scottish nation should be the model against which nationalism is interpreted. By developing the concept of ‘civil society’ as both ‘container’ and ‘director’ of nationalism, this article will show the influence of a ‘decentralised’ state to conceptions of ‘best-governing’. By stressing the contradictions in the legitimacy of the British state mid-century, it will be argued that Scottish nationalism can not be regarded as merely romantic, nor, as its outcome, can Scottish culture be presented as somehow weak. This article will argue that intellectual thought regarding the state meant that the only form of nationalism at this time was ‘Unionist-nationalism’, more union with England, not less.