Shellfish exploitation in Stone Age Arctic Norway: procurement patterns and household activities

Archaeological evidence for coastal shellfish exploitation in Arctic Norway mostly dates from 5300 to 1500 BC, encompassing the terminal Mesolithic, the Late Stone Age, and the beginning of the Early Metal Period. Shell middens are generally associated with semi-subterranean houses, but may also occur as free-standing deposits. The primary shellfish taxa exploited were Littorina littorea, Arctica islandica and Mytilus edulis. Most of the species utilized were available in the littoral zone and were easily procured in the course of daily household activities, but sub-littoral A. islandica would have required greater investment in procurement technology and time, as well as labor cooperation. Shellfish were an occasional dietary supplement and could also serve as fishing bait. Spatial and temporal variation in shellfish assemblages reflects local marine ecology, sea-level changes, household dynamics, and perhaps field processing. Interpretation of the existing data is constrained by inadequate midden sampling and documentation methods.     

Social Service Delivery and the Voluntary Sector in Contemporary Australia

Continuing poverty, deprivation and unemployment in rich English-speaking countries have led governments to reconsider existing methods of delivering social services. In Australia, the Minister for Employment Services, Tony Abbott, has developed a doctrine of 'constructive compassion' to justify human service delivery through private firms and voluntary organisations. The McClure Report has also argued for 'social partnerships' involving governments, the business community and the voluntary sector. The limited purpose of this research note is to evaluate these arguments using the conceptual tools of market failure, government failure and voluntary failure and drawing on some of the theoretical literature on the voluntary sector, especially Billis and Glennerster (1998). We contend that considerable scope does indeed exist for social service delivery by voluntary organisations, subject to at least one important caveat.     

Solidarity™: Student Activism,Affective Labor,and the Fair Trade Campaign in the United States

Abstract: Ethical labeling campaigns have become a central means for diffusing and negotiating conflicts between social movements and market actors. Fair Trade was a pioneering ethical label and, by many accounts, a success. For nearly a decade, United Students for Fair Trade (USFT) activists worked to build the reputation of the Fair Trade Certified (FTC) label, but in Fall 2011 they withdrew their support and urged ethical consumers to do the same. This paper is an urgent reflection on USFT's trajectory from guerrilla marketing to boycotting FTC products. While their actions may appear shortsighted and contradictory, their decision to withdraw support from the FTC label has roots in a long struggle for control of Fair Trade. We argue that their actions signal a new stage in consumer action, as activists lose faith in the legitimacy of ethical labels and instead target the agencies that own the ethical brandscape.     

Serpentine Hot Springs,Alaska: results of excavations and implications for the age and significance of northern fluted points

The dispersal of Homo sapiens across the New World is one of the greatest chapters in the history of our species; however, major questions about this late Pleistocene diaspora remain unanswered. Two contentious issues are the timing of colonization of the Bering Land Bridge and origin of Clovis, which at 13,000 calendar years ago is the earliest unequivocal complex of archaeological sites in temperate North America, known by its specialized fluted spear points. One hypothesis is that fluting technology emerged in Beringia and from there was carried southbound, with fluted points becoming the diagnostic “calling card” of early Paleoindians spreading across the Western Hemisphere. Fluted points have long been known from Alaska, yet until now they have never been found in a datable geologic context, making their relationship to Clovis a mystery. Here we show that a new archaeological site at Serpentine Hot Springs, Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, Alaska, contains fluted points in a stratified geologic deposit dating to no earlier than 12,400 calendar years ago. Our results suggest that Alaska's fluted-point complex is too young to be ancestral to Clovis, and that it instead represents either a south-to-north dispersal of early Americans or transmission of fluting technology from temperate North America. These results suggest that the peopling of the Americas and development of Paleoindian technology were much more complex than traditional models predict.     

The morphogenesis of state highway networks in the United States

Despite the dominance of automobiles in the 20th century transport patterns of the U.S., the modern highway network actually emerged as a result of popular social and economic goals in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These goals were based on improving rural mobility and living conditions, and were completely unrelated to automobile traffic. The desire to improve rural roads stimulated the creation of highway networks at new spatial scales, with consistent patterns among most states. These networks were later greatly expanded in size and adapted to carry motorized traffic between major cities, with the result that their patterns have been substantially altered from their original form.     

Policy Coherence and Component-Driven Policymaking: Arctic Policy in Canada and the United States

This research extends theorizing about the implications of political environments to the content of policy areas. We consider the case of Arctic policy in Canada and the United States as an example of what we label as component-driven policymaking. We show how the lack of a clear constituency and the lack of a stable policy subsystem for the Arctic create a policy environment for which the politics of particular issues dominate Arctic policymaking. The result is a policy space labeled Arctic policy that lacks policy coherence. We suggest that similar features of component-based policymaking help explain limited policy coherence for a variety of policy areas such as policies for children, families, rural areas, urban areas, and women in the United States.     

Cultural biographies, cognitive landscapes and dirty old bits of boat:'theory' in maritime archaeology

Advances in the use of archaeological theory by maritime archaeologists are proposed after a brief review of recent literature on the subject. A disparity in theoretical discussion between maritime and'mainstream' archaeology is noted and reasons for this discussed, before two areas are explored where mutual advances might be made: an'engendered' maritime archaeology and'Marxist' perspectives. The paper concludes by considering the development of specific theoretical approaches unique to the maritime sphere.     

The Flintlock Site (8JA1763): An Unusual Underwater Deposit in the Apalachicola River, Florida

In the fall of 2001, staff of the Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research were led by river divers to an underwater site in the Apalachicola River containing a large concentration of prehistoric and historic artifacts lying on the riverbed. Subsequent inspection of the submerged river bank and scoured limestone river channel revealed a myriad of objects, which included iron fasteners, metal tools and implements, broken glass bottles, stone projectile points, scattered bricks and stone blocks, and other materials. Discovery of two large fragments of a wooden watercraft, a bayonet, a copper arrowhead, and flintlock gun barrels initially prompted researchers to hypothesize that the site might represent the remains of a U.S. Army boat that was attacked in 1817 by Seminole Indians while en route upriver. The episode, which caused the deaths of more than 30 soldiers and several women who were aboard the boat, led to the First Seminole War and the U.S. Army invasion of Florida. To investigate this hypothesis, a systematic survey of the riverbed was undertaken in the spring of 2002 to record underwater features and recover additional diagnostic artifacts. These activities employed side-scan sonar as well as diver visual investigations. This paper presents a case study of the value and broader significance of aggregate data where interpretation was underpinned by artefactual, historical and environmental analysis.