Seeds for the Future: The Materialities of Traditional Ecological Knowledge

Many collaborative projects between Indigenous peoples and archaeologists have focused on traditional ecological knowledge, emphasizing long-term use and patterns of continuity and innovation. Through an investigation of medicinal plant use at the Mashantucket Pequot Reservation, located in southeastern New England, archaeobotanical remains are considered the outcomes of everyday environmental interaction. The charred plant remains, which can be identified as the materials of traditional ecological knowledge, are viewed as evidence of efforts to preserve and modify current practice and as interventions to shape future practice. Through this collaborative, multi-dimensional examination, we can access the “seeds” for the future and explore how Indigenous peoples, specifically women, were historical actors during the process of colonization in North America.     

Gazetteer of small‐scale monuments in prehistoric Hadramawt,Yemen: a radiocarbon chronology from the RASA‐AHSD Project research 1996–2008

This paper provides a new, interpretive gazetteer and chronology of Hadramawt’s highland monuments based on results from archaeological survey and test excavations by the RASA‐AHSD (Roots of Agriculture in southern Arabia‐Arabian Human Social Dynamics) Project. With the exception of a few incidental sightings and an unpublished pipeline survey, the prehistoric record of southern Yemen’s highland plateau has been largely unknown. There are few settlements, so that understanding human landscape history must begin with the numerous small‐scale stone monuments left by mobile people. With examples representing monuments from the fifth, fourth, third and first millennia BC, the corpus of small excavations and radiocarbon dates reported here provides the first guide to the monument types of South Arabian highlands. Monument building began under more moist conditions and appears to have commemorated animal sacrifices long before commemorating mortuary rites and interment. There appears to be a temporal break of 1000 years before the widespread and varied practices of Bronze Age tomb construction, which lasted through the third millennium BC. After another break in monument construction, tombs were reused in the first millennium BC, sometimes with successive ritual visits. The data presented offer new material for the interpretation of the lives and activities of prehistoric pastoralists throughout the Holocene.     

Chubut,Argentina: a contested Welsh ‘first-place’

Abstract

In an attempt to escape British hegemony, the Welsh established a Patagonian colony in 1865, in what is now the Chubut Province of Argentina. The historical struggles the immigrants faced upon settling the land are rooted in the landscape and commemorated in different versions of Patagonian regional history through provincial museum narratives that serve as a method of solidifying Welshness in Chubut. Contemporarily, the local tourism industry constructs the Welsh as the first settlers in the region, while minimally representing predecessor groups like the indigenous communities or Spanish colonials. Curiously, the representation of these other heritage communities throughout heritage displays actually serves to bolster the Welsh ‘first-place’ claims over the region. These tensions are seen throughout community-based museums in the region that assert a locally rooted hybrid identity by acknowledging local historical diversity, while simultaneously recalling and emphasising the [Welsh] homeland heritage. This paper explores how ‘first-places’ can be a source of symbolic conflict, while simultaneously serving as a dynamic, heritage construction mechanism. This research investigates how the Welsh diaspora negotiates its identity through the mobilisation of heritage, to make claims about the Chubut Province as a symbolic Welsh first-place, as well as broader Argentine heritage.     

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     

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.     

HOBY — AN EXCEPTIONAL EARLY ROMAN IRON AGE SITE IN THE WESTERN BALTIC REGION

Hoby on the island of Lolland in the western part of the Baltic Sea is strategically located in a coastal landscape offering abundant resources. In 1920, one of the most richly furnished so‐called “Lübsow type” graves dating to the first century AD was discovered at Hoby. The settlement associated with the grave was recognised in 1999. Excavations of the settlement between 2001 and 2016 have confirmed the central role of Hoby in the Iron Age society. The research has focused on the Iron Age population and the infrastructure on Lolland. The Iron Age open cultural landscape encompassed numerous settlements, richly furnished burials and fortifications, and has produced unique metal finds. The article presents a summary of investigation results.