Small Islands and Marginality: Santa Barbara Island and its Role in the Prehistory of California’s Channel Islands

As the smallest of California’s Channel Islands, Santa Barbara Island has received limited attention from archaeologists. A United States National Park Service project designed to assess its 19 known sites evolved into an island-wide survey that increased the number to 63 sites that date between 4000 and 600 years ago. Most are small shell and lithic scatters, although some are larger shell middens with greater faunal and artifact diversity. Their constituents and geographic distribution indicate that the island not only served as a stopover during inter-island travel but was occupied for longer periods to target local resources such as marine mammal rookeries. Our research presents an opportunity to evaluate the significance of this island to prehistoric communities throughout the archipelago. On a broader level, it provides insights into the important roles that small islands have played in prehistoric lifeways as well as perceptions of marginality.     

Provisioning Inka feasts at Tiwanaku, Bolivia: the geographic origins of camelids in the Pumapunku complex

While political integration can be achieved by many means, here we focus on the use of feasting and statecraft in the Inka Empire of the Andean Late Horizon (c. AD 1400-1532) in South America. In order to examine Inka political integration of the Lake Titicaca Basin of Bolivia, we examine paleomobility and paleodiet through radiogenic strontium and stable oxygen and carbon isotope data in archaeological camelid remains from the site of Tiwanaku. Mean radiogenic strontium isotope values from all archaeological camelid enamel and bone samples is ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr = 0.70998 ± 0.00179 (1σ, n = 48), mean stable oxygen isotope values from a sub-set of archaeological camelid enamel and bone samples is δ¹⁸O_{carbonate (VPDB)} = −10.0‰ ± 2.6‰ (1σ, n = 18) and mean stable carbon isotope values from a sub-set of archaeological camelid enamel and bone samples is δ¹³C_{carbonate (VPDB)} = −9.0‰ ± 1.7‰ (1σ, n = 18). While many camelids consumed in these feasting events were likely local to the Lake Titicaca Basin, others came from a variety of different geologic zones, elucidating our understanding of Inka statecraft and the role of feasting in political integration in empires in the past.     

Conference reviews

Culturelink‐first world conference dynamics of communication and cultural change‐the role of networks, Zagreb, Croatia, 8–11 June 1995

Cultural policy—state of the art “taking cultural policy into the 21st century’ Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 28–30 June 1995     

Arctic Explorer Robert E. Peary’s Other Quest: Money,Science, and the Year 1897

American Robert E. Peary is famous for his claim of being the first person to reach the North Pole. However, too little historical attention has been paid to independent parts of his long exploratory career. A closer examination of one year, 1897, in his two‐decade quest, reveals the substantial difficulties of being an explorer at the turn of the twentieth century. Peary used specially crafted arguments to endear himself to the recently organized but poorly connected professional scientists who proved to be his most earnest, if inconsistent, backers before 1898. Peary worked on the scientists’ behalf to locate, and sometimes create, publishing venues and stateside audiences for them, in exchange for their patronage. The money chase was difficult and time‐consuming, but did more than help the scientists and ensure Peary’s future backing. It introduced him to the young American scientific community, with whom he learned to “sell” the Arctic. Peary also used his scientific credentials to maintain a public image of the Arctic that allowed Americans to celebrate both the rugged hero and cultural superiority in this remote region.     

The taphonomic attributes of a Late Cretaceous plesiosaur skeleton from New Zealand

The pre-burial history of a partial elasmosaurid plesiosaur skeleton is reconstructed from analysis of the distribution and modification of bones preserved in a calcareous concretionary mass. The specimen lacks the skull, cervical vertebrae, left limb bones and some girdle elements, but the remaining bones are interpreted to have been deposited on the sea floor from a semi-buoyant carcass and their relative positions modified by the action of scavengers. Bioerosive agents caused loss of bone, particularly on joint surfaces and vertebral centra, as the carcass lay exposed on the sea floor, perhaps for several years before burial.     

Time and the Global: Against the Homogeneous,Empty Communities in Contemporary Social Theory

What are the chronopolitics of global–local relations? This article reconsiders the oversymmetric portrayals of identity and nationalism in Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities, and reopens questions about chronopolitics raised by Johannes Fabian in Time and the Other. Anderson relies heavily on Walter Benjamin, but seriously misunderstands him, in his portrayal of nations as parallel communities in ‘homogeneous, empty, time’. Against Anderson's premise that homogeneous, empty time is real, this article argues that calibrated asymmetries in global time were made real by colonial practices, that we have forgotten that glory and hierarchical self-assertion, not horizontal comradeship, were central to Europe's Rome-fantasizing imperial nations, and that élite diaspora have replaced imperial conquests precisely in the wake of decolonization and the rise of UN ideology.     

A Hostile Takeover of Nature? Placing Value in Conservation Finance

Conservation finance is a nascent field that claims to “deliver maximum conservation impacts, while, at the same time, generating returns for investors” (Credit Suisse/WWF). While geographers have questioned the ability of conservation finance to play a significant role in international biodiversity conservation, an emerging cohort of boutique private equity firms are actively generating returns on North American conservation projects. This raises the question: how are these firms generating profits, and in turn, returns for their shareholders? Drawing from a Marxian understanding of finance as redistributive, I argue that these firms are generating profits through a process similar to a corporate hostile takeover. Using the examples of ranchland and timberland investment in the United States, I show that (1) the materialities and historical geographies of these landscapes play a crucial role their monetization, and (2) shareholder returns are generated through a combination of traditional real estate sales and revaluations, public monies, and commodity production.