Review

Gunantuna: Aspects of the Person, the Self and the Individual among the Tolai By A.L. Epstein . Bathurst: Crawford House Publishing. 1999. Pp.viii + 241.     

Selecting and Sampling Shipwreck Timbers for Dendrochronological Research: practical guidance

In this article, we provide practical and straightforward guidance for the selection and sampling of shipwreck timbers for dendrochronological research. We outline sampling strategies and present informative figures that illustrate how to proceed in a variety of scenarios that archaeologists regularly encounter. However, in order to fully exploit the potential of tree‐ring research on these objects, we would urge archaeologists to involve dendrochronologists during the project planning phase to carefully plan and conduct adequate sampling of shipwreck assemblages.     

Quantifying flake scar patterning on cores using 3D recording techniques

A key feature of stone artefact morphology is the arrangement and patterning of negative flake scars left on flakes and cores. Scar patterning is often treated as a rough guide to identifying methods of core preparation and reduction and usually forms a key component of lithic typologies and other systems of analysis. However, scar patterns are often complex and difficult to capture using traditional measurement or classificatory techniques, particularly where flakes are thick and irregular, or where cores are flaked on many sides from a number of platforms. Three-dimensional analysis of flake scars is now more feasible using digital 3D surface scanning technologies, or using three-dimensional measurement tools such as the Microscribe-3DX which is now widely used in biological geometric morphometric studies more generally [D.C. Adams, F.J. Rohlf, D.E. Slice, Ital. J. Zool., 71 (2004) 5–16; F.J. Rohlf, L.F. Marcus, Trends Ecol. Evol. 8 (1993) 129–132. [1 and 34]]. This paper develops a mathematical formula for describing scar patterning using vectors calculated from the start and end points of flake scars recorded in three dimensions.     

Assessment of the Southern Dispersal: GIS-Based Analyses of Potential Routes at Oxygen Isotopic Stage 4

This paper explores the geographic and environmental context of the Southern Dispersal Route, which has been proposed as a migratory route for Homo sapiens from East Africa to Australasia during oxygen isotope stage (OIS) 4 (71–59 kyr). A series of assumptions and constraints garnered from modern hunter-gatherer observations are used to build a model of coastal foragers, which is then integrated with high-resolution physiographic analyses to produce a potential dispersal route along the coastline of the Indian Ocean. Paleoenvironmental conditions that may have supplied critical resources or served as obstacles to human colonization are identified and discussed in regards to human subsistence, the speed of migration, and demographic expansion. These factors suggest that rapid dispersals along coastlines and river valleys would have occurred upon the initial expansion out of Africa, but slowed as populations expanded demographically into South Asia and the Sunda Shelf. This also suggests that archaeological signatures relating to the earliest modern Homo sapiens are more likely to be recovered in South Asia.     

The Social Production of Latin@ Visibilities and Invisibilities: Geographies of Power in Small Town America

This paper explores the sociospatial dynamics unfolding in Perry, a rural Iowa town that has been facing rapid change since the 1990s due to growing Latin@ settlement. We focus on what we call the social production of Latin@ visibilities and invisibilities: spatialized practices by individuals, families, communities, and institutions that render different Latin@ groups visible or invisible, with repercussions for survival, community integration, and political praxis. We discuss the border within as an extension of border politics and borderlands rhetorics to the US “heartland”, and how the entrenchment of a regime of deportability creates racialized and gendered conditions for the in/visibility of Latin@ immigrants and Latin@s more broadly. We conclude by considering some of the theoretical and political implications of our analysis for such geographies of power and the social relations, locations, and discourses that constitute and are constituted by them.     

Who brought in the rabbits? Taphonomical analysis of Mousterian and Solutrean leporid accumulations from Gruta do Caldeirão (Tomar,Portugal)

In the Iberian Peninsula, leporids, and specifically rabbits, play a key role in the understanding of hunter-gatherer economies. They appear to have been especially important in the Tardiglacial, when large numbers of small prey animals and of the European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) in particular, are a ubiquitous feature of faunal assemblages from archaeological sites. Since a large number of non-human predators can also contribute to the formation of such assemblages, the ability to discriminate between bones accumulated by humans and by other kinds of predators is a key prerequisite to their interpretation. On the basis of systematic actualistic studies carried out on modern leporid remains produced by mammalian terrestrial carnivores, nocturnal and diurnal raptors, and humans, we identified diagnostic taphonomic indicators of the different predators. In this paper, the patterns observed on the modern material are applied to the taphonomical analysis of two archaeological samples of rabbit and hare remains from Mousterian and Solutrean layers of Gruta do Caldeirão, a cave site located in Central Portugal. Our results suggest that Eagle Owl (Bubo bubo) were mainly responsible for the Mousterian accumulations, whilst the Solutrean ones were most likely the result of human activity. These data support the notion that, in Iberia, significant reliance on rabbits does not become a feature of subsistence strategies until later Upper Palaeolithic times.     

Accepting Jewish roots for a pair of shoes: identity dilemmas of Jewish children in Poland during the Second World War and in the early post-war years

Jewish children who managed to survive Nazi attempts to exterminate them are a clear, yet still under-examined, example of a group who managed to resist the path to genocide. It was only by changing their individual social identity that they were able to survive. By more or less consciously breaking their ties with Judaism and converting to Catholicism, they abandoned membership of the group destined for extermination and strove to become unidentifiable as Jews. This article focuses on the issue of the identity of the Jewish children raised or born in Poland during the Nazi persecution and who survived the Shoah under an assumed non-Jewish identity. It will examine the war's impact on these Polish ‘hidden children’ and its consequences for their ethnic and religious identity. Many children were intentionally deprived of their Jewish identity by their parents or saviours since such a renunciation was the only way to survive. Therefore the role of non-Jewish rescuers and the attitude of the Jewish authorities towards these children's fate during and after the war is also discussed. The survival of these children hinged upon questions of identity and how successfully they were able to conceal their life-threatening origins and adopt the much safer disguise.