The Still Bay points of Blombos Cave (South Africa)

We present the results of a technological and morphometric analysis of all the Still Bay points (n = 371) recovered from the 1993 to 2004 excavations at Blombos Cave. We have been able to reconstruct the manufacturing sequence of the bifacial points from initial shaping, by direct internal percussion, to finished morphology, by direct marginal percussion. Identifications of impact fractures and manufacturing breaks are based on comparisons with experimental and archaeological bifacial points of verified function, i.e. Paleoindian points from bison kill sites, replicates of Solutrean points mounted as spear-heads or arrowheads and shot into adult cattle, and experimental replication on local raw materials. Our analysis shows that: (a) only a minority of the points are finished forms, and that a large number of pieces are production failures, a situation known at bifacial point production sites of later ages; (b) morphometric and impact scar analyses should take into account this process and distinguish finished points from preforms and unfinished points; (c) there were at least three different kinds of raw material sources and that there is a marked increase in the frequencies of silcrete with respect to the M2 and M3 phases at Blombos; (d) three kinds of evidence prove that some of the points were hafted axially and used as spear tips; (e) production of bifacial points was a primary activity at the site but the hypothesis of intergroup exchange of Still Bay points cannot be sustained on the basis of present evidence; and (f) the Still Bay phase appears to initiate a trend to relatively rapid changes in specialized hunting weaponry and that this innovation is congruent with other innovations such as bone tools, shell beads and engraved ochre of the M1 and M2 phases at Blombos.     

Palaeoenvironments, the archaeological record and cereal pollen detection at Clickimin, Shetland, Scotland

The Loch of Clickimin, Shetland, is well known for its broch and associated monuments supposedly of the Bronze and Iron Ages, although the former date is disputed. Pollen, diatom and sedimentological investigations permit fresh insights into the landscape and economic impacts of those who constructed the monuments, reveal that the environs of the site experienced environmental change from Neolithic times onward and provide the first Holocene radiocarbon dates from the immediate locality. The broch-building period witnessed a continuation of pre-existing pastoral husbandry for which heather burning may have exacerbated the natural spread of blanket peat. Initially, no evidence was adduced for local arable activity in the present investigation, and this was thought to be consistent possibly with the low numbers of excavated querns and the absence of cereal macrofossil finds when compared with other Shetland broch sites. The application of ‘rapid scanning’ techniques, however, led to the discovery of a consistent cereal-type pollen representation from Bronze Age times onwards. The discrepancies between the palaeoenvironmental evidence and the environmental and palaeoeconomic inferences made by the excavator of the site are explored. Evidence is presented that both supports and contradicts previous assumptions surrounding an important archaeological site.     

A technological crossroads: Exploring diversity in the pressure blade technology of Mesolithic Latvia

A long‐standing debate in archaeology concerns the sources of technological diversification among prehistoric hunter‐gatherers. This includes the study of the emergence and spread of pressure blade technology in Northern Europe during the Early Holocene. Until now, there has been little technological study of lithic collections from the East Baltic region, and our knowledge of the development and spread of this technology in the area is inadequate. This article presents for the first time a technological analysis of lithic assemblages from seven Early and Middle Mesolithic sites in the territory of present‐day Latvia, offering new possibilities for discussing pressure blade technology and research objectives connected with it. Furthermore, variation in elements of this technology is explored in relation to raw‐material characteristics through experimental flint knapping. Finally, the factors influencing diversity in craft traditions, as well as large‐scale communication and shifting spheres of interaction within Northern Europe during the Mesolithic, are discussed.     

Policy Analysis Postmodernized

This paper examines the implications of postmodern deconstructive insights for the practice and teaching of policy analysis. A review of recent literature highlights the clashes between rational/positivist and rhetorical/postpositivist perspectives, and concludes that elitist technocratic complexity too often excludes the public from meaningful policy deliberation. The paper closes with concrete recommendations for the academic preparation of more democratic, more rhetorically sophisticated “postmodern” policy analysts.     

Sexual relationships and working lives of free Afro-Caribbean women

The article explores how the sexual relationships and working lives of free Afro-Caribbean women in the town of Christiansted, St. Croix, the Danish-Norwegian West Indies, were affected by discourses of race and gender during the period c. 1780–1820. To further the understanding of the conditions of the free Afro-Caribbean women in Christiansted, the article relates to the situation in other Caribbean colonies, especially the British West Indies, based on the assumption that it was the same discourses of race and gender that swept through all the Caribbean slave societies. I n its approach, the article is inspired by concepts of race and gender in postcolonial studies.

The investigation shows the prevalence in the Danish-Norwegian West Indies of discourses of Afro-Caribbean women as, on the one hand, unwomanly and physically strong and, on the other hand, promiscuous and of easy virtue. On this basis, the article argues that the interplay between these gendered racial discourses and the social practices of the free Afro-Caribbean women were in fact far more complex than previous international research has suggested. In the sexual and work relations of daily life, discourses were interpreted more fluently, and a number of competing conditions and ideas challenged or worked against the idea of Afro-Caribbean racial inferiority. Among these were, for instance, the women’s social position and European ideas of work appropriate for women.     

Language as apparatus: entanglements of language,culture and territory and the invention of nation and ethnicity

Postcolonial linguistics has shown that African languages emerged from a complex figuration of missionary, scientific and colonial practices. The article interprets this emergence as the result of an existential onto-epistemological dislocation stabilised through the hegemonic project of colonialism. It rests on an apparatus of modernity that separated nature and culture/society and stabilised this new order with a particular notion of language as an autonomous object. In the nineteenth century, language enters a conjunction of territory and culture, which played out in Europe in the terms of a nationalist, hegemonic trajectory and in Africa as the fractionation of ethnic/linguistic groups and the pervasive linguo-ethnification of contemporary societies. Thus, language can be understood to be an apparatus productive of nationalism as well as ethnicity. In an attempt to demonstrate the plausibility of this conceptualisation, I show how today these trajectories have effects in that Afrikaans in South Africa as ethnified language loses and Swahili in Tanzania as national language gains ground at the respective universities. Both languages compete with global academic English, which despite its colonial heritage appears as a deterritorialised, culturally neutral language.