A manuscript of Rochester’s “Upon Nothing” in a newly recovered eighteenth-century miscellany of Restoration verse

In this article, I present a previously unexplored verse miscellany, which contains 18 poems and begins with a copy of the Earl of Rochester’s “Upon Nothing.” The miscellany, held at Staffordshire Record Office, was compiled around 1703 by Sir John Bridgeman, 3rd baronet, a Shropshire gentleman and grandson of the politician Sir Orlando Bridgeman. While many of the contents relate to the political events surrounding the accession to the throne of Queen Anne, the collection reveals a pervasive interest in the turbulent years of the Restoration period. The cultural memory of the Exclusion Crisis casts its shadow over Bridgeman’s collection, and many of the topical poems touch upon the ramifications of an unstable line of royal succession. Tracing the political and scribal communities to which Bridgeman might have belonged, I explore the ways in which Rochester, and the Restoration, were being refigured in the earliest years of the eighteenth century.     

Co-Producing Mobilities: negotiating geographical knowledge in a conference session on the move

In an experimental session entitled Co-Producing Mobilities held at the 2014 Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers Annual Conference, 20 mobility scholars travelled around London on foot, by bus and by Tube to investigate how mobilities could be considered co-produced. In this paper, 18 participants reflect on this collaborative experiment and on how it influenced their thinking about mobilities, geographical knowledge and pedagogy. Contributions cast light on the function of conferences and the multiple forms of pedagogy they enable, and provide guiding resources for those now wanting to continue such experiments.     

Evidence of butchery and hominid activities at Torralba and Ambrona; an evaluation using microscopic techniques

Torralba and Ambrona have been interpreted as butchery sites for many years, a contention recently challenged; natural death or carnivore activities are invoked as an alternative explanation. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) of bone surface replicas distinguishes among hominid-produced cutmarks, carnivore tooth scratches, and other types of bone damage. A sample of 102 replicas, comprising the most likely cutmarks on a combined sample of roughly 3000 fossils from Torralba and Ambrona, were scanned to determine the major agent of damage. Microscopically verified cutmarks are present, but rare, occurring in less than 1% of the bones in the combined sample. Carnivore tooth scratches are comparably rare. In contrast, evidence of sedimentary abrasion, which obliterates the diagnostic features of cutmarks, is present on nearly every bone from Torralba and Ambrona. It remains unresolved whether cutmarks were initially more common on these bones and were subsequently obliterated by abrasion, or whether the incidence of cutmarks was always low. These data demonstrate clearly that hominids and carnivores each damaged some bones at Torralba and Ambrona, but the frequency of each type of mark is too low to confirm strongly the interpretation of these sites as either butchery or carnivore remains.     

Nothing Lasts Forever: Environmental Discourses on the Collapse of Past Societies

The study of the collapse of past societies raises many questions for the theory and practice of archaeology. Interest in collapse extends as well into the natural sciences and environmental and sustainability policy. Despite a range of approaches to collapse, the predominant paradigm is environmental collapse, which I argue obscures recognition of the dynamic role of social processes that lie at the heart of human communities. These environmental discourses, together with confusion over terminology and the concepts of collapse, have created widespread aporia about collapse and resulted in the creation of mixed messages about complex historical and social processes.     

Paleoindian technological provisioning strategies in the northwestern Great Basin

Great Basin populations during the Pleistocene–Holocene Transition (PHT) are often characterized as being mobile and focused on wetlands; however, the factors that influenced where Paleoindians selected residential campsites are poorly understood. Using predictions derived from optimal foraging-based patch choice models and GIS reconstructions of the PHT landscape, some researchers have argued that occupations in smaller wetlands should have been shorter than occupations in larger wetlands but such arguments have rarely been evaluated using empirical data. The PHT lithic record provides an opportunity to evaluate the relationship between wetland size and occupation span by applying Kuhn's (1995) concept of technological provisioning. Kuhn expects more mobile populations to provision individuals and more sedentary populations to provision places and suggests that: (1) a strategy of provisioning individuals should be reflected by a high proportion of more extensively used artifacts made on non-local raw materials; and (2) a strategy of provisioning places should be reflected by a high proportion of less extensively used artifacts made on local raw materials. We apply the technological provisioning concept to lithic assemblages from two of the Parman localities, extensive PHT sites in the northwestern Great Basin, and compare local and nonlocal artifacts to determine if Paleoindians shifted from provisioning individuals while moving to/from the sites to provisioning the place while occupying them. There is no relationship between artifact transport distance and artifact use intensity. We interpret these findings as evidence that Paleoindians did not alter their provisioning strategies while occupying the Parman localities, likely because occupations were brief within a small wetland poorly-suited to support groups for long periods.     

Identifying Chemical Activity Residues on Prehistoric House Floors: A Methodology And Rationale For Multi‐Elemental Characterization of a Mild Acid Extract of Anthropogenic Sediments

Archaeologists have employed sediment chemistry in site prospection for nearly a century. For example, phosphorus is a good indicator of human occupation, because it is a generic indicator of human activity. Recently, multi‐element studies of sediments have successfully identified specific activity areas by analysing other elements in addition to phosphorus. To reach its full potential, however, sediment chemistry must be undertaken with an understanding of how these residues are formed and of the chemical indicators that can be used to identify specific activities. Methodologies that optimize the extraction of specific residues must be employed. Not to do so is a naïve application of the technique.