Cattle mobility in prehistoric Britain: strontium isotope analysis of cattle teeth from Durrington Walls (Wiltshire,Britain)

An important role has been envisaged for cattle during the Neolithic period in Britain based on their prominence within the faunal assemblages of the period as a whole. The relative ease with which cattle can be moved over long distances and the requirement to provide ample pastureland leads almost inescapably to the consideration of prehistoric cattle movement. This paper presents the results of an investigation into the mobility of Late Neolithic cattle at the well-known site of Durrington Walls, Wiltshire. ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr values from cattle (Bos taurus) teeth were compared to local vegetation samples, well established values from archaeological material and to known geological conditions in order to determine whether individual animals were raised in areas with similar geological conditions as those found at the site (i.e. chalkland), and therefore whether the animals were of allochthonous or autochthonous origin. In total, 13 mandibular molars from Durrington Walls were analysed. Two of the animals included in the study were certainly raised under conditions similar to those found in the vicinity of Durrington Walls, but the other 11 provided signatures so distinct from that found locally that they could not have been raised on chalkland. From the results it is suggested that cattle were brought to the site from a variety of grazing areas in different parts of Britain. The implication of these findings is that the movement of cattle was undertaken during the Late Neolithic, and that in a number of cases substantial distances must have been traversed in order for animals to reach the site. In addition, the study provided valuable information for the interpretation of the site, which attracted people from a variety of regions, probably for ceremonial reasons.     

Turbo Island,Bristol: excavating a contemporary homeless place

This paper provides an assessment of the excavation of an apparently ordinary space in Bristol (UK) in 2009. Although the space appears unremarkable to most passers-by, it is unusual in being a place used routinely by many of the city’s street-drinking and homeless community. Homeless people were ‘colleagues’, involved in excavation, finds processing and interpretation. The collaborative nature of this project goes further than merely attempting to represent social groups who have traditionally been excluded from heritage practice and interpretation — it lays methodological foundations for praxis.     

Striking health workers: Precarity and healthcare in neoliberal Kenya

Precarity is increasingly a condition of life for Kenyan health workers as even professionals face costs of living and forms of debt that exceed their (unstable) salaries. Years of austerity and chronic scarcity have eroded healthcare infrastructures and rendered crises part of everyday work. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Kenya from 2018 to 2020, we explore health workers’ experiences and concerns about the precarity of their working conditions, livelihoods, health and futures amidst the government's attempts to experiment with ‘universal health coverage’ (UHC) and improve access to healthcare. While UHC appears to call for greater state responsibility for healthcare futures, healthcare provision is being further outsourced and privatized, underlining that seemingly progressive health policies like UHC are sustaining and replicating neoliberal trends.     

Arts practitioners in the cultural policy process: spear-carriers or speaking parts?

This paper considers the argument that arts practitioners are rarely acknowledged by cultural policy researchers as being more than marginally involved in policy-making. Drawing on public policy analysis which pays attention to a breadth of policy actors, and on the concept of civil society, the paper examines whether these approaches can help to better investigate and understand the role of arts practitioners in the policy process. It discusses this subject in relation to cultural policy in general and in the specific arena of British arts policy, focusing on original case-study research of playwrights’ organisations and playwriting policy. The case-study evidence demonstrates that arts practitioners – through involvement in policy debate and implementation, and their own initiatives and activities – are frequently engaged in the policy process and thus more broadly in the democratic public domain. Understanding of cultural policy development is therefore considerably weakened if the role of practitioners is ignored.     

Native Americans,politics, and frontiers

Ehrenreich, Jeffrey, ed. Political Anthropology of Ecuador: Perspectives from Indigenous Cultures. Albany, New York: The Society for Latin American Anthropology and the Center for the Caribbean and Latin America, 1985. xxvii + 256 pp. including individuals chapter notes and references. Cloth $10.00.

Schmink, Marianne and Charles H. Wood, eds. Frontier Expansion in Amazonia. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1985. xviii + 502 pp. including individual chapter notes and references, and index. $12.00 paper.     

Trade and sorcery accusations in East Africa

Gerald W. Hartwig. The Art of Survival in East Africa: The Kerebe and Long‐Distance Trade 1800–1895. New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc. Africana Publishing Company, 1976. Maps, appendix, references, and index. $24.00.     

BOOKS RECEIVED

Art Gallaher, Jr. and Harland Padfield, Eds. The Dying Community. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press (School of American Research), 1980. xiv + 305 pp.

Nancy Dorian. Language Death: The Life Cycle of a Scottish Gaelic Dialect. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981. xiv + 206 pp     

Sexism and the celestial gynaeceum — from 500 to 1200

One indirect index of attitudes toward women, as well as their actual position in the medieval Church, can be gained through a collective study of saints' lives. For on one level, membership in the heavenly city reflected the earthly society of the middle ages. Although in theory the Church professed a policy of spiritual egalitarianism, in reality it was much more difficult for women than for men to transcend their sex and enter the ranks of the celestial hierarchy. The rather wide discrepancy in sanctity (approximately 85% of the saints of this period were male), can be explained in part by the exclusion of women from leadership roles in the secular Church hierarchy. However, certain periods were more conducive than others to the making of women saints. Women had a greater prominence, as reflected by their selection as saints, in the initial stages of the various movements of the Church. As the Church became more secure, right- minded and ultimately regularized and reformed, the premature enthusiasm for women waned. A backlash resulted in which women were viewed as liabilities and generally suspect. They were denied opportunities for a prominence in the religious community, a ‘visibility’ upon which sanctity was predicated.     

The origins of two purportedly pre-Columbian Mexican crystal skulls

The well-known life-size rock crystal skull in the British Museum was purchased in 1897 as an example of genuine pre-Columbian workmanship, but its authenticity has been the subject of increasing speculation since the 1930s. This paper is concerned with the history, technology and material of the skull and another larger white quartz skull, donated recently to the Smithsonian Institution. Manufacturing techniques were investigated, using scanning electron microscopy to examine tool marks on the artefacts, and compared with Mesoamerican material from secure contexts. A Mixtec rock crystal goblet and a group of Aztec/Mixtec rock crystal beads show no evidence of lapidary wheels. They were probably worked with stone and wood tools charged with abrasives, some of which may have been as hard as corundum. Textual evidence for Mexican lapidary techniques during the early colonial period, supported by limited archaeological evidence, also indicates a technology without the wheel, probably based on natural tool materials. In contrast, the two skulls under consideration were carved with rotary wheels. The British Museum skull was worked with hard abrasives such as corundum or diamond, whereas X-ray diffraction revealed traces of carborundum (SiC), a hard modern synthetic abrasive, on the Smithsonian skull. Investigation of fluid and solid inclusions in the quartz of the British Museum skull, using microscopy and Raman spectroscopy, shows that the material formed in a mesothermal metamorphic environment equivalent to greenschist facies. This suggests that the quartz was obtained from Brazil or Madagascar, areas far outside pre-Columbian trade networks. Recent archival research revealed that the British Museum skull was rejected as a modern artefact by the Museo Nacional de Mexico in 1885, when offered for sale by the collector and dealer, Eugène Boban. These findings led to the conclusion that the British Museum skull was worked in Europe during the nineteenth century. The Smithsonian Institution skull was probably manufactured shortly before it was bought in Mexico City in 1960; large blocks of white quartz would have been available from deposits in Mexico and the USA.