General Meeting,March 10th, 1848

Abstract

The tiled pavement in the nave of Haughmond Abbey, Shropshire, has been partly exposed twice in the last hundred years. Although no decoration appears to survive in situ, a few decorated tiles in the loose collection may derive from this floor. The most significant of these, a roundel fragment, carries the design of a tonsured monk with a crozier. Although this design and the whole mosaic arrangement of the in situ tiles are unique, a comparison can be drawn with the pavement donated by Abbot Nicholas at Halesowen. The arrangement of roundels and frame tiles and the subject matter of the decorated roundels are sufficiently similar to posit a direct connection. There are no close dates for the Haughmond floor, but it is suggested that the Halesowen pavement, dated 1290–98, was the prototype.     

The archaeology of the Spanish contact period in the Caribbean

The arrival of Spanish conquistadors and colonists to the Caribbean in the late fifteenth century set in motion the processes that produced the post-1500 New World. The sixteenth-century cultural and ecological exchanges among Europe, Africa, and the Americas that took place during the early contact period greatly affected the social and economic patterns of life in both the Old and the New Worlds. Nowhere was this change manifest as profoundly and dramatically as in the sixteenth-century Caribbean. This essay explores the archaeological insights into the processes of encounter between the Amerindian peoples of the Caribbean region and the first permanent Europeans in the Americas and the responses of each to contact with the other. Archaeological research has informed our understanding of this seminal era in New World cultural development in important ways. It had also allowed the documentation of both the cultural and demographic disintegration of the Caribbean Indians and the formation of Euro-American culture.     

Fig Springs: The mid-seventeenth century in North-Central Florida

Historical Archaeology -     

Book reviews

INTERNATIONAL STABILITY: MILITARY, ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL DIMENSIONS. Dale J. Hekhuis, Charles G. McClintock and Arthur L. Burns (eds.). New York, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1964. Pp. xii + 296. £3.

THE AUSTRALIAN BALANCE OF PAYMENTS: A STUDY OF POST‐WAR DEVELOPMENTS. G. D. McColl. Melbourne University Press, 1965. Pp. xiii + 180. 45/‐.

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR WORLD TRADE: PROCEEDINGS OF A. CHATHAM HOUSE CONFERENCE, BELLAGIO, 16–24 SEPTEMBER 1963. For the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Oxford University Press, 1964. Pp. 241. 49/6.

JAPAN AND THE UNITED STATES IN WORLD TRADE. Warren Huns‐berger. New York, Harper & Row, for the Council on Foreign Relations, 1964. Pp. xvii + 492. $9.95.

MILITARY INSTITUTIONS AND POWER IN THE NEW STATES. William Gutteridge. London, Pall Mall Press, 1964. Pp. viii, 182. 25/‐.

AUSTRALIA'S DEFENCE. T. B. Millar. Melbourne University Press, 1965. Pp. x + 198. 20/‐ (paperbound).

QUIET DECISION. A STUDY OF SIR GEORGE PEARCE. Peter Heydon. Melbourne University Press, 1965. 67/6.

THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF INDONESIA 1951–1963. Donald Hindley. University of California Press, 1964. Pp. xviii + 380. $8.50.

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SOVIET JEWRY AND HUMAN RIGHTS. Isi Leibler. Melbourne, Human Rights Publications, 1965. Pp. 78. 10/6d.

THE CHINESE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA. Victor Purcell. Second Edition, Oxford University Press for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, 1965. Pp. xvi + 623. £6/6/‐.

THE THIRD CHINA. C. P. FitzGerald. F. W. Cheshire for the Australian Institute of International Affairs, Melbourne, 1965. Pp. vii + 109. 13/6.

SOUTH AND EAST ASIA SINCE 1800. Victor Purcell. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1965. Pp. x + 228. 25/‐ stg.