Border crossings: reflections on women's lives in twentieth-century Britain

There has been a growing focus on personal life, memoir and autobiography in feminist writing, and in the social sciences more generally, in recent years. Feminist geographers, among others, argue that family relationships and personal recollections should be part of studies of the construction of personal identity and a sense of place. I combine this argument with research into women's labour market participation to explore the changing significance of waged work in British women's lives over the last century, seen through the personal lens of three generations of women's experiences of migration across geographical and class boundaries.     

Why Do People Become Involved With Archaeology? Some Answers from Alabama��s Black Belt Region

This paper considers a question posed by the organizers of the Dynamics of Inclusion in Public Archaeology symposium: “Why do people become involved?” Based on my own quest for public involvement with Cahawba, a site in Alabama’s Black Belt region, I contend that people are most likely to become involved when an archaeologist communicates interpretively. Furthermore, certain categories of people are just more likely to become actively engaged with archaeology than others. Who are they? What are their characteristics? Where can they be found? The National Survey on Recreation and the Environment has the answers.     

The ‘Triple R’ Approach on the Restoration of Archaeological Dry Stone City Walls: Procedures and Application to a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Oman

The ‘Triple R’ approach on the restoration of dry stone walls, using recognizable, reversible and respectful constructive techniques is here illustrated. A set of restoration procedures are explained and applied to a UNESCO World Heritage site in Al-Baleed (Salalah, Sultanate of Oman) in the ‘Land of Frankincense’. The procedures were adapted in an innovative way to take into account the climate features of the Indian Ocean area (specifically, the effects of the monsoon season). All the restoration procedures aimed at conserving the site’s original architectural features by using only suitable stones and materials found on-site. Specific procedures have been adopted to consolidate walls, gates, foundations and sloping surfaces. Simple on-site mechanical tests and evaluation methods have been developed for a quick assessment of the safety level of the restored walls to ease future archaeological excavations. The application is related to a waterfront side of the ancient city built around the ninth century and added to over the next five centuries. These restoration procedures allowed for further archaeological excavations with new findings is here described.     

Collecting Material Folklore: Motivations and Methods in the Owen and Hasluck Collections

As contributor to the mistakenly conceptualised concept of “belief legend,” I want to survey the historical antecedents and the circumstances that at a certain stage prompted researchers to identify this category, formerly classified as mythical or demonological legend. This was the time when legend scholars began field-collection, experiencing the profound attachment of narratives to living local folk religion. After decades of meticulous field observation, which has led to the accumulation of a more dependable stock of legendry from diverse national, subcultural, occupational groups, it becomes clear that folk belief is a part of any legend, therefore there is no need to maintain the term “belief legend.” Belief is the stimulator and the purpose of telling any narrative within the larger category of the legend genre; it is also the instigator of the legend dialectic. The current confusion caused by the whimsical application of terms such as “truth,” “rationality,” “belief,” and “believability” in scholarly legend interpretations, should caution us to avoid making biased, outsider's judgements instead of presenting the viewpoint of tellers and audiences.     

Migration and Viking Dublin: paleomobility and paleodiet through isotopic analyses

During the early medieval period in Ireland, Dublin was established as the largest Viking settlement on the island in the ninth century AD. A previous biodistance study has suggested that the population of the town consisted of a polyethnic amalgam of immigrant and indigenous. In this study, we use biogeochemistry to investigate paleomobility and paleodiet in archeological human remains from the ninth to eleventh century levels at the sites at Fishamble Street II (National Museum of Ireland excavation number E172), Fishamble Street III (E190) and John’s Lane (E173), as well as twelfth-century remains from Wood Quay (E132). Through radiogenic strontium isotope, stable oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen isotope, and elemental concentration analyses, we investigate the origins of the individuals who lived and died in early and late Viking Dublin. Mean archaeological human enamel and bone isotope values from Dublin are ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr = 0.70975 ± 0.00139 (2σ, n = 22), δ¹³C_{carbonate(V-PDB)} = −14.8‰ ± 0.8‰ (1σ, n = 12), and δ¹⁸O_{carbonate(V-PDB)} = −7.2‰ ± 1.0‰ (1σ, n = 12). Archaeological human bone samples exhibit mean δ¹³C_{collagen(V-PDB)} = −20.8‰ ± 0.5‰ (1σ, n = 12) and mean δ¹⁵N_{collagen(AIR)} = +10.0‰ ± 1.7‰ (1σ, n = 12). Comparing these data with archaeological faunal data from Dublin and published data from northern Europe, we argue that there are no clear immigrants from other parts of the North Atlantic, although there is one clear outlier in both origins and diet. Overall, the relative homogeneity in both paleomobility and paleodiet may support models of acculturation in Viking Dublin, rather than a high number of first-generation immigrants or continued migration from Scandinavia.