How to Make an Unfired Clay Cooking Pot: Understanding the Technological Choices Made by Arctic Potters

Between about 500 a.d. and the late nineteenth century, clay cooking pots associated with the Thule culture were produced in the Arctic region. Ethnographic and archaeological records indicate that these vessels were typically underfired (often even unfired), highly porous, and easily broken. Despite these characteristics, the evidence indicates that they were used to heat water over open fires. In this paper, we examine how Arctic potters were able to produce unsintered vessels capable of holding liquids without disintegrating. We conclude that the application of seal oil and seal blood to the pot’s surface was the key to their success.

Estimating Migration Flows from Birthplace‐Specific Population Stocks of Infants

When adequate data on migration are unavailable, demographers infer such data indirectly, usually by turning to residual methods of estimating net migration. This paper sets out and illustrates an inferential method that uses population totals in the first age group of birthplace‐specific counts of residents in each region of a multiregional system to indirectly infer the entire age schedule of directional age‐specific migration flows. Specifically, it uses an estimate of infant migration that is afforded by a count of infants enumerated in a region other than their region of birth to infer all other age‐specific migration flows. Since infants migrate with their parents, the migration propensities of both are correlated, and the general stability of the age profiles of migration schedules then allows the association to be extended to all other age groups.     

Unborn in the USA: Inside the War on Abortion

Unborn in the USA traces the activities of antiabortion activistsin thirty-five states, documenting a range of antichoice activism,from exhibiting photo displays of aborted fetuses to a folkartist who creates life-sized sculptures of fetuses at variousdevelopmental stages. It offers only one side in the abortionwar—those opposed to the procedure—and only thosewho attempt to derail support for abortion by presenting imagesof aborted fetuses, even though, curiously, the     

Conservation Narratives in Costa Rica: Conflict and Co‐existence

This article examines narratives about nature conservation in Costa Rica, specifically those related to wildlife and biodiversity, and their evolution with the growth of tourism and bioprospecting industries. It outlines a traditional conservation narrative and two streams of an emerging counter‐narrative, and discusses problems and prospects for each in contemporary Costa Rica. The use of narrative and counter‐narrative follows Roe (1991, 1995), Fairhead and Leach (1995), and Leach and Mearns (1996). The article focuses particularly on the ways in which the narratives are increasingly drawing on, informing, and sometimes conflicting with one another; it is based on the author’s research undertaken in various protected areas in Costa Rica since 1994 and on research published by others.     

Non-destructive chemical characterization of ceramic sherds from Shipwreck 31CR314 and Brunswick Town, North Carolina

The purpose of this study was to chemically and texturally characterize ceramic oil jar sherds from North Carolina Shipwreck 31CR314 and to explore the utility of environmental scanning electron microscopy/X-ray energy dispersive spectrometry (SEM/EDS) for that purpose. The oil jar sherds, widely dispersed about Shipwreck 31CR314, are morphologically similar to each other, which suggests they could be from a single jar, but with so few joins this could not be concluded with certainty. Therefore, an aim of this study was to investigate whether chemical or textural characterization of the sherds might reveal unique attributes that could distinguish individual jars; results of characterization perhaps could give information on their origin and possibly site formation processes, such as whether environmental forces could have scattered sherds of a single jar during and after sinking of the ship. Previous studies have indicated this shipwreck is likely the remnants of the Queen Anne's Revenge, flagship of the pirate Blackbeard. Sherds from this shipwreck were compared with similar oil jar sherds excavated from a land site, Brunswick Town, North Carolina, to explore the use of composition and texture as hallmarks. The chemical components of the artifacts were determined by SEM/EDS. This method of analysis is valuable for archaeological research because it is rapid and non-destructive to the ceramic artifacts. Both groups of lead-glazed coarse red earthenware sherds were texturally similar except for the glazed sides of all 31CR314 sherds that exhibited small tracks of unique crescent-shaped marks. These marks may be due to manufacturing effects and immersion in seawater, and the marks may serve as hallmarks for individual jars or potentially individual manufacturers. The sherds were generally similar in composition, but the two groups exhibited distinct differences. Brunswick Town sherds consistently contained more phosphate on unglazed sides, an average 1.46 wt.% P₂O₅, and also contained trace elements not detected in the Shipwreck 31CR314 sherds. These distinct differences could be due to different manufacturing origins for Shipwreck 31CR314 and Brunswick Town ceramics but also could reflect their subjection to different environments during use and loss prior to archaeological recovery.     

“The impulse is cartographic”: Counter-Mapping Indonesia’s Resource Frontiers in the Context of Coloniality

Resource frontiers continue to expand globally across Indigenous lands as states and corporations enact forms of expropriation redolent of the formal colonial era for the sake of extraction. In the face of this expansion, the burden remains largely on frontline communities to defend their ecologies using the tools available to them. Across Indonesia’s resource frontiers, the “cartographic impulse” Edward Said once named to describe anticolonial struggles is apparent in the form of counter-mapping, which seeks to secure adat (customary) rights and defend Indigenous lands against extractivist expansion. This article revisits this practice and argues that the counter-map and its goals remain tenuous—mapping in its scalable form risks processing complex and multi-dimensional ways of relating to land into two-dimensional representations appropriate for a liberal property regime, while adat itself is a contingent and mutable legal goal. Ultimately, the article echoes emerging calls for the burden to be shifted away from frontline communities through the pursuit of just transitions to post-extractivism. Pemburuan sumber daya ke wilayah-wilayah baru yang masih kaya (resource frontiers) di tanah masyarakat adat semakin meluas secara global, seiring praktek-praktek perampasan berbau kolonial yang dilakukan oleh negara dan korporasi demi tujuan ekstraksi. Berhadapan dengan ekspansi ini, masyarakat di gugus depanlah yang menanggung beban terbesar untuk mempertahankan lingkungan hidup mereka, dengan menggunakan sarana yang tersedia bagi mereka. Di wilayah-wilayah baru ekstraksi sumber daya alam di Indonesia, apa yang pernah disebut Edward Said sebagai ‘cartographic impulse’ untuk menggambarkan perjuangan anti-kolonial terlihat jelas dalam bentuk counter-mapping, yang bertujuan untuk mempertahankan tanah-tanah adat dari ekspansi ekstravistik. Artikel ini hendak meninjau kembali praktek counter-mapping ini dan berargumen bahwa counter-map dan tujuan-tujuannya masih lemah– mapping dalam bentuk yang dapat diukur mengalami masalah dengan persoalan proses dan persoalan corak multidimensioanal dari hubungan dengan tanah dalam kaitan dengan representasi dua-dimensi yang hanya cocok dengan rezim kepemilikan liberal; sementara adat sendiri adalah tujuan legal yang sifatnya kontingen dan terbuka terhadap perubahan. Pada akhirnya artikel ini ikut menyuarakan seruan yang banyak muncul, bahwa beban harus dialihkan dari masyarakat frontline melalui usaha untuk transisi-transisi yang adil menuju post-extractivism.     

Bushwalking in Kakadu: a study of cultural borderlands

This paper examines the relationship between the contested domains of Aboriginal traditional owners and non‐Aboriginal Park users, specifically bushwalkers, in Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory of Australia. It argues that Kakadu remains a cultural borderland where a negotiated relationship between local Aboriginal traditional owners and non‐Aboriginal Park users is struggling to emerge. It finds that the rhetoric of Aboriginal/non‐Aboriginal co‐existence, which pervades the Park, is infused by the legacy of a colonial settler state, which has presumed access to territory, marginalized Indigenous people and obviated their social and cultural landscape in favour of an expansionist aesthetic of wilderness preservation and appreciation. This paper finds that the activities of bushwalkers and the concerns that these activities generate in the local Aboriginal domain produce a novel space where place is contested and transformed, a space of negotiation and resistance where people's cherished values both compete with and influence one another.