Fallow deer (Dama dama dama) management in Roman South-East Britain

This paper presents new carbon, nitrogen and sulphur isotope data for European fallow deer (Dama dama dama) in Roman Britain and discusses results in light of evidence from classical texts, landscape archaeology, zooarchaeology and the limited available samples of metric data. The new isotope data presented here are from Fishbourne Roman Palace (Sussex), two sites on the Isle of Thanet (Kent) and a further two sites in London. In spite of small sample sizes the data make an important contribution to the very limited corpus of scientific research on the species and provide new resolution to the nature of fallow deer movement and management in Roman Britain.     

Magunkaquog Materiality, Federal Recognition, and the Search for a Deeper History

This article explores the manner in which archaeology can address some of the issues that confront contemporary Native American groups trying to gain federal recognition. Often frustrating and at times capricious, the federal recognition process privileges documentary evidence over other forms of information in determining the political and cultural continuity demanded of groups seeking recognition. Demonstrating cultural continuity is hindered by the antiquated, assimilationist views that underpin the recognition process which equate the adoption of European cultural practices with the loss of Indian identity. This issue of authenticity is linked to even broader questions concerning materiality and the construction of identity. Drawing on archaeological and documentary investigations of the Christian Indian community of Magunkaquog, this paper explores the ambiguities of an archival record that can be challenged by material evidence. Archaeological evidence of cultural persistence discussed in the paper supports the political arguments of contemporary Native American groups that their ancestors maintained their political and cultural identity in the face of European colonization.     

The earliest cylinder seal in the Arabian Peninsula

A cylinder seal of Late Uruk (late fourth millennium BC) type from Abu Dhabi is presented and analysed. Comparisons with excavated finds from elsewhere in the Near East are discussed. An inventory of cylinder seals from sites in the UAE and the Sultanate of Oman shows that cylinder seal use, while not unknown in the region, was never very great. The ways in which the seal may have arrived at its eventual place of discovery are described and the significance of the seal is assessed.     

The Accidental Archaeology of the Fariss Hotel (Site 5PE576)

Historical Archaeology - The Fariss Hotel was never the focus of a research or curation design, was excavated as overburden, and became an orphan collection. However, the Fariss Hotel assemblage...     

The Red Cross and the Establishment of Maternal and Infant Welfare in the 1930s Gold Coast

In 1932 the Gold Coast Branch of the British Red Cross Society was inaugurated in Accra. Its central, stated purpose was to maintain and expand health and welfare services for women and children. This article examines closely the work of the Red Cross as it set up and ran clinics, fundraising campaigns and building programmes in the Gold Coast. It asks how a humanitarian organisation became so integrated into services for mothers and infants in the course of the 1930s. In so doing, it contributes to a burgeoning area of historiography that looks at humanitarianism as a key component of Empire. During the 1930s, as the British Empire became subject to oversight by new international networks that the League of Nations sat at the heart of. In this context, the colonial government was under pressure to provide welfare for African subjects, particularly mothers and babies. This article argues that state, mission and eventually humanitarian organisation – the Red Cross – were interdependent in providing these services. The Red Cross became politicised as it shored up the colonial state’s health infrastructure, intervening as a solution to dilemmas over who was responsible for maternal and infant health.     

Book reviews

Thomas Dublin and Kathryn Kish Sklar, eds., ‘Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1830–1930,’ http://vvomhist.Binghamton.edu.

Leonard L. Richards, The Slave Power: The Free North and Southern Domination, 1780‐1860 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000). Pp.xii + 228. $39.95 (hardback); $19.95 (paperback). ISBN 0 8071 2537 7; 0 8071 2600 4.

Timothy S. Huebner, The Southern Judicial Tradition: Southern Judges and Sectional Distinctiveness, 1790–1890 (Athens: University of Georgia Press), 1999. Pp. xiii 4‐ 263. $45.00 (hardback). ISBN 0 252 0634 0.

Glenn C. Altschuler and Stuart M. Blumin, Rude Republic: Americans and their Politics in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000). Pp.xii + 316. $35.00 (hardback). ISBN 0 6910 0130 8.

Joseph G. Dawson III, Doniphan's Epic March: The 1st Missouri Volunteers in the Mexican War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999). Pp. xii + 325. $35.00 (hardback). ISBN 0 7006 0956.

Julie Roy Jeffrey, The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism: Ordinary Women in the Antislavery Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998). $45.00 (hardback); $18.95 (paperback). Pp.xii + 311. ISBN 0 8078 2436 4; 0 8078 4741 0.

Paul Goodman, Of One Blood: Abolitionism and the Origins of Racial Equality (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998). Pp.xxi + 303. $35.00 (hardback). ISBN 0 5202 0794 7.

Mark E. Neely Jr, Southern Rights: Political Prisoners and the Myth of Confederate Constitutionalism (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999). Pp.vii + 212. $35.00 (hardback). ISBN 0 8139 1894 4.

John C. Willis, Forgotten Time: The Yazoo‐Mississippi Delta after the Civil War (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000). Pp. xiv + 239. $55.00 (hardback); $19.50 (paperback). ISBN 0 8139 1971 1; 0 8139 1982 7.