Mother,Child, Race,Nation: The Visual Iconography of Rescue and the Politics of Transnational and Transracial Adoption

‘Third World’ poverty and hunger conjures up certain conventionalised images: thin children, with or without their mothers. This paper explores the genealogy of such images in the mid‐twentieth century, and shows how they mobilise ideologies of ‘rescue’ while pointing away from structural (political, military and economic) explanations for poverty, famine and other disasters. These images had a counterpart in practices of transnational and transracial adoption, which became the subject of debate in the USA during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, and were at least as much about symbolic debates over race as the fate of particular children. Together, these visual and familial practices made US foreign and domestic poverty policy intelligible as a debate over whether to save women and children. When they cast the USA as rescuer, they made it all but impossible to understand what US political, military or economic power had to do with creating the problem.     

The meals in a Tuscan building yard during the Middle Age. Characterization of organic residues in ceramic potsherds

The characterization of organic residues found in ceramics objects coming from the Carmine Convent in Siena (Central Italy), probably built in the second half of the 13th century, is described. The nine objects analyzed in this study are pots, casseroles, and lids and they were used as filling material of the vault of one room of the convent.     

The plant landscape of the imperial harbour of Rome

The research concerns the Tiber delta area, about 3 km far from the present seacoast, where the remains of the ancient harbour of Rome are located. In 42 AD, Claudius started the construction of the harbour and Nero completed it in 64 AD. Then, the emperor Trajan went on to add a hexagonal basin to the former structure, which had gradually silted up. The imperial harbour was connected to the Tiber River and ultimately to the city of Rome through the Trajan channel. During the imperial period, most of the supplies imported from the Mediterranean provinces reached the city of Rome through Portus.     

Colonowhen, Colonowho, Colonowhere, Colonowhy: Exploring the Meaning behind the Use of Colonoware Ceramics in Nineteenth-Century Manassas, Virginia

This paper explores the meaning and use of colonoware ceramics recovered from six archaeological sites dating from the nineteenth-century at Manassas, Virginia. Americans, both free and enslaved, occupied this landscape. Archaeological investigations have recovered colonoware at some nineteenth-century domestic sites but not others. The occurrence of colonoware at these sites is patterned: colonoware in nineteenth-century Manassas was not an “ethnic” marker denoting peoples of African descent, but rather a social marker that distinguished enslaved people from free. People of free and enslaved status attributed negative connotations to colonoware. Enslaved servants employed colonoware out of economic necessity, not as a way to express ethnicity.     

Raw material quality and Oldowan hominin toolstone preferences: evidence from Kanjera South,Kenya

The role of raw material quality in Oldowan technology has not been fully explored. There are numerous studies suggesting Oldowan hominins preferred certain types of stone for artifact manufacture. Previous studies of the artifact assemblage from the early Pliocene Oldowan locality of Kanjera South (South Rachuonyo District, Kenya) show that raw material selection and transport was an important aspect of Late Pliocene hominin adaptations. Yet the exact properties of stones that hominins were selecting remain enigmatic. Two potentially important features of artifact raw material are durability and fracture predictability. We investigate fracture predictability through mechanical tests of stone and investigations of the affect of stone properties on fracture patterns in archaeological collections. We investigate stone durability with actualistic studies of edge attrition combined with further mechanical tests of various lithologies. Oldowan hominins at Kanjera appear to have selected raw materials based on their durability. The ability for a stone to fracture consistently does not appear to be as important in hominin toolstone preference as previously assumed. Hominins that produced the assemblages at Kanjera South appear to have incorporated an extensive understanding of various attributes of raw material in the transport and production of stone artifacts. When combined with previous research on the transport patterns at Kanjera, the results of this study provide evidence for a more complex raw material acquisition strategy than has previously been suggested for Late Pliocene Oldowan hominins.