The Political Forest in the Era of Green Neoliberalism

Nancy Peluso and Peter Vandergeest first used the term “political forest” to denaturalise forests, refiguring them as political-ecological entities. Across three moments of colonialism, post-colonial independence, and counter-insurgency struggles, they analyse how states in Southeast Asia (re)made forests as a means of territorialising power. More recently, they identify a fourth, contemporary moment characterised by the entry of diverse non-state actors into the making of forests, and a shift in the rationalities and technologies of forest management. We label this fourth moment “green neoliberalism” to identify an era of global environmental governance characterised by market-based solutions to socio-ecological problems, biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration priorities, and new moral and scientific claims to forests spanning a variety of sites and scales. The papers in this symposium transport the analytic of the political forest to Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guatemala, Indonesia, Madagascar, Singapore, and Thailand to examine how green neoliberalism’s discourses and practices have created new sites and expressions of territorialisation, governance, knowledge production, and subject formation. In doing so, they illuminate the multiplicity of actors (re)making political forests at a moment when forests’ virtues as carbon sinks and biodiversity hotspots draw massive flows of capital and justify remaking socio-ecological relations across the globe.     

The Chalcolithic burial cave in Ma'avarot,Israel, and its palaeoanthropological implications

This paper reports on bioarchaeological and palaeopathological investigations of the Chalcolithic Ma'avarot burial cave in the Hefer valley (Sharon central coastal plain), Israel. The objective of this project was to retrieve enough data from the anthropological material which, in conjunction with the rest of the archaeological record, would help to better elucidate aspects of the archaeological questions concerning the Chalcolithic in the Levant. The integrated analysis of the archaeological record included studies of burial customs and practices, the associated material culture, skeletal biology, pathology and bone archaeometry. Correlations are made with the current and contradictory arguments about the migration of peoples and cultural diffusion and the explanatory hypothesis supporting autochthonous cultural developmental processes at this chronological juncture in the Levant. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A possible eighteenth to nineteenth century example of a popliteal aneurysm from Leicester

Examples of the impressions made on bones by arterial aneurysms are rare in the archaeological record. One such specimen was found in a collection of 5000 pieces of disarticulated human bone from a disturbed eighteenth to nineteenth century graveyard in Leicester. The distal end of an adult femur shows a lesion on the posterior surface that has been identified as that made by an aneurysm of the popliteal artery, by comparison with an authenticated museum specimen of that condition, also of eighteenth century data. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

To Make a Revolutionary Cuisine: Gender and Politics in French Kitchens, 1789–1815

This essay investigates the political significance of gender in French kitchens and cuisine during the French Revolution. Integrating a wide range of published and archival sources, it highlights the brief moment when women's work as cooks symbolised republican virtues, before examining the forces that ultimately retrieved male cooks’ reputations from association with their aristocratic employers to be considered artisans emblematic of a new nation that integrated the past glories and the present ideals of France.     

Combining Indigenous and Maritime Archaeological Approaches: Experiences and Insights from the ‘(Re)locating Narrunga Project’, Yorke Peninsula, South Australia

This paper details the unique pairing of Indigenous and maritime archaeological approaches in the ‘(Re)locating Narrunga Project’. Narrunga was a ketch built by the Narungga Aboriginal community at Point Pearce Mission (Yorke Peninsula, South Australia) at the turn of the twentieth century and later sunk in the 1940s. It is argued that convergences between the scholarly interests of Indigenous and maritime archaeological approaches have been slow to develop and that maritime archaeology as a sub-discipline has not capitalized on the insights that can be gained from collaborative approaches between communities and practitioners. Similarly, Indigenous communities in Australia have had few opportunities to work with researchers to record their maritime heritage. As is evident in the Narrunga story told in this research, non-Indigenous records have been complicit in underplaying the maritime achievements and skills of Narungga people and collaborative research can work towards decolonizing this past.