‘The Conscience of the Community’: the Au Vaine of Rarotonga

ABSTRACT

The Au Vaine (‘several women’ in Cook Islands Māori), grassroots women’s committees, worked to promote agricultural efforts and food security in Rarotonga during the 1920s and 1930s. A unique organization, the Au Vaine actively encouraged the growing of commercial crops alongside subsistence plantings at a time when women were being pushed towards the home and hearth, and men pulled to wage labour jobs. These women illustrate the powerful and often unheard voices Pacific women retained throughout this period, as well as the critical role of food in Pacific history. In this article I examine the context within which the Au Vaine emerged, discuss what distinguished them from other women’s committees in Polynesia, highlight their purpose and impact on Cook Islands foodways, and explore some of the reasons they declined by the 1940s.     

Defending harmful tax practices: mining companies’ responses to the Australian Senate Inquiry into tax avoidance

This article examines the Australian Senate’s 2015–2017 inquiry into corporate tax avoidance to illuminate the tax strategies used by the multinational corporations (MNCs) most targeted by tax justice campaigners, versus those of particular relevance in an Australian context: mining companies. Using documentary analysis, we examine how these companies discursively defended their tax avoidance strategies. Despite differences in the context in which the issue of tax minimisation has risen to prominence, we show that in Australia, MNCs’ legitimacy in paying lower levels of tax has been challenged in a similar manner to that of MNCs in other industry sectors that were held responsible for post-global financial crisis austerity measures in states like the US and UK. This suggests that history and context matter not in and of themselves, but for the impact they have on the discursive power of the actors involved, depending on the visibility and salience of the issue associated with them.     

Post-Roman crop production and processing: Archaeological evidence from Goldthorpe,South Yorkshire

The remains of a ditched field system dating from the late Iron Age to the early post-Roman period, and two associated corn drying ovens (dating to the 5th–6th centuries AD) were revealed during archaeological excavations at Goldthorpe, South Yorkshire. The site was excavated during 2012 and 2013, during which bulk environmental samples were taken in order to retrieve any surviving botanical remains from deposits associated with the corn drying ovens, and other features across the excavated area. Early post-Roman occupation is under-represented in the archaeological record, especially in northern England, as such human activity and subsistence during this period are currently not well understood. This paper combines evidence for the field system, the physical remains of the corn drying ovens and their associated botanical remains to further understand early post-Roman change and continuity in landscape use and crop production and processing practices.     

“The music never stopped”: naming businesses as a method for remembering the Grateful Dead

ABSTRACT

Memorialization on the cultural landscape is a common method of celebrating the legacy of an event or person significant to the history of geographical location. The Grateful Dead is a band that continues to define the ideals of the late-1960s San Francisco Sound through their music’s creative freedom and inclination toward experimentation. Although the original lineup of the Grateful Dead is no longer intact, the spirit of the music they created and their psychedelic appeal has been preserved on the cultural landscape. Despite differing reasons for naming their business after the band, hundreds of business owners in the United States have collectively preserved the Grateful Dead’s presence on the cultural landscape. In this paper we explore the distribution of businesses in the United States with Grateful Dead-related names, and how the presence of these business names enriches the cultural landscape with the memory of the band’s music as a product of the iconic San Francisco Sound.     

Evaluating Ancient Whale Exploitation on the Northern Oregon Coast Through Ancient DNA and Zooarchaeological Analysis

Whales have long been an important part of Pacific Northwest Coast human subsistence and lifeways. Native peoples on the Oregon Coast were not known to hunt whales, but a humpback whale phalange with an embedded bone harpoon at the Par-Tee site (35CLT20) and ethnographic accounts raised the possibility of opportunistic whale hunting. We analyzed a suite of whale remains from Par-Tee and performed ancient DNA-based species identifications on 30 specimens. The assemblage includes gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus, 60.7% of the assemblage), humpbacks (Megaptera novaeangliae, 32.1%), minkes (Balaenoptera acutorostrata, 3.6%), and orcas (Orcinus orca, 3.6%). While the species composition is similar to those found in archaeological deposits from systematic whaling areas in Washington and Vancouver Island, bone modification patterns and element representation reveal important differences. Our analysis demonstrates that whales were likely a supplementary part of human subsistence at Par-Tee and, while opportunistic whale hunting likely occurred, it may have been secondary to scavenging and utilization of beached and/or drift whales.     

The Joint Polish--German Commission for the Revision of School Textbooks and Polish Views of German History

The Joint Polish–German Commission for the Revision ofSchool Textbooks was set up in 1972, bringing together historiansfrom Poland and the Federal Republic of Germany in view of reopeninga scholarly dialogue after decades of almost complete noncommunication.Until the late 1980s, the commission played a prominent roleas a forum for cross-national discussions on Polish-German Beziehungsgeschichte,and most of the leading Polish experts in German history participatedin its proceedings. For the development of Polish historiographyon Germany the work of the commission seems to have been relevantin at least two respects. The commission's regular conferenceson controversial or methodologically complex issues of Polish-GermanBeziehungsgeschichte contributed, on the one hand, to defininga new agenda for Polish historiography on Germany. The interestin explicitly comparative approaches to German and Polish historyincreased, and the focus shifted from specifically ‘Polishinterests’ in German history to more general issues. Onthe other hand, these conferences provided Polish historianswith the opportunity to make their research more visible toGerman historians (even outside the field of specialised EastEuropeanists)—a fact that encouraged Polish historiographyon Germany to pursue more ambitious tasks.