Southern Farmers and Their Stories: Memory and Meaning in Oral History

Melissa Walker, an associate professor of history at ConverseCollege, author of All We Knew Was To Farm: Rural Women in theUpcountry South, 1919–1941 (Baltimore, MD: Johns HopkinsUniversity Press, 2000), winner of the Willie Lee Rose Prizefrom the Southern Association for Women Historians, presentsan intellectual tour de force in Southern Farmers and TheirStories: Memory and Meaning in Oral History, part of the NewDirections in Southern History Series from the University ofKentucky     

Trace element fingerprinting of ancient Chinese gold with femtosecond laser ablation-inductively coupled mass spectrometry

In this collaborative investigation, femtosecond laser ablation-inductively coupled mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) was applied to the study of a remarkable group of ancient Chinese gold objects in the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. Taking advantage of the superior ablation characteristics and high precision of a femtosecond 266 nm Ti:sapphire laser at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, major, minor and trace element concentrations in the gold fragments were quantified. Results validate use of femtosecond LA-ICP-MS for revealing “fingerprints” in minute gold samples. These fingerprints allow us to establish patterns based on the association of silver, palladium and platinum that support historical, technical and stylistic relationships, and shed new light on these ancient objects.     

Preliminary Investigations of Two Shipwreck Sites in Cahuita National Park,Costa Rica

Recent underwater archaeological investigations in Costa Rica focused on two sites as potential candidates for Danish West Indies slave ships wrecked in 1710. Historical research suggests a landmark wrecking event associated with a large infusion of Africans, many who remained in Central America. This paper is the first interim report of two fieldwork seasons combining field methods, research, and preliminary interpretation of the findings with voyage history. Context within the broader theme of slave‐ship archaeology and Costa Rica Caribbean landscape is addressed. An integral part of the initiative is community memory, stewardship, and education.     

The Social,Spatial, and Bioarchaeological Histories of Ancient Oman project: the mortuary landscape of Dhank

The Social, Spatial, and Bioarchaeological Histories of Ancient Oman (SoBO) project has conducted three seasons of survey and excavation in north‐western Oman. Focusing on third‐millennium BC archaeological features, this project is unique because of the combination of geospatial survey and bioarchaeological excavation of mortuary monuments in and around the town of Dhank. Here we report our initial findings, define our survey area and techniques and discuss excavated funerary structures and associated radiocarbon dates from both charcoal and human skeletal remains. This report presents preliminary results that introduce this new project on the prehistoric mortuary landscapes of Oman and highlight the techniques the SoBO team employs to examine Bronze Age communities in this rural location.