Uranium-series dating rock art in East Timor

At many sites throughout the world rock art paintings have been covered by naturally deposited calcite laminations, which we demonstrate can be individually dated by recently improved uranium-series methods. Here we report the application of multi-collector inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry to measure the ages for carbonate coatings that bracket red pigment at Lene Hara cave, East Timor, which could be evidence of human painting. These analyses establish the feasibility of dating milligram samples of finely layered calcite deposits associated with archaeological evidence of human occupation. In addition to confirming an age of less then 6300 years for the visible red paintings on the carbonate surface we also report a substantially older age of 24,000 to 29,300 years for a similar, older red pigment lamination providing possible evidence for an earlier painting episode.     

“[T]Hose Who Had Money Were Opposed to Us,and Those Who Were Our Friends Were Not the Moneyed Class”: Philadelphia and the 1837–1838 Canadian Rebellions

In early January 1838, weeks following a disastrous military defeat at the hands of the British at Saint-Eustache, in the British colony of Lower Canada, two patriotes leaders, Dr. Robert Nelson and Dr. Edmund O’Callaghan, arrived in Philadelphia. Their mission was to find military and financial support among local residents for the 1837 Rebellion. A few days later, they left empty-handed and disappointed. According to O’Callaghan, those who supported them were incapable to help, while those who had the means to offer concrete assistance were, quite simply, opposed to their crusade. Why did Nelson and O’Callaghan leave empty-handed? Were O’Callaghan’s assumptions about the people of Philadelphia correct? This article explains why the Patirote mission to Philadelphia failed and suggests that O’Callaghan was incorrect. The mission did not fail because their allies were too poor while those with money opposed them. Instead, though many actually hoped that the rebels succeeded and offered much moral support and encouragement, all were quite simply unwilling to offer any military or financial support, citing American neutrality, economic uncertainty, and the fear of British retaliation.     

A Portuguese lifestyle in the Flemish countryside: ceramics of the Ximenez family (1595-c. 1700)

SUMMARY: In 1595, the Portuguese merchant banker Duarte Ximenez bought the Blauwhof, a castle-like estate in the Flemish countryside. An assemblage of pottery, recovered from the moat adjacent to the estate’s manor house, testifies to the status and hybrid identity of this 17th-century immigrant family. Although they were well assimilated into Antwerp’s high society, their foreign roots are still evident from particular Portuguese imports or the unconventional use of locally produced ceramics. Comparison with probate inventories shows that the two categories of Portuguese pottery serve different purposes, one in the public sphere of knowledgeable actors, and one in the intimacy of the Ximenez family.     

Does it come from the Pays de Bray? Examination of an origin hypothesis for the ferrous reinforcements used in French medieval churches using major and trace element analyses

A new methodology based on major and trace element analyses of slag inclusions is proposed to determine (or exclude) the provenance of iron artefacts. It is applied to verify if the Pays de Bray, a French area between Rouen and Beauvais, could have been an important supplier for the ferrous reinforcements used in the Middle Ages for the building of churches and cathedrals in these two towns. To this purpose, the behaviour of trace elements during both direct and indirect operating chains is studied combining experimental smelting and different analytical methods, such as SEM–EDS, ICP–MS, LA–ICP–MS and INAA, performed on archaeological samples. The chemical signature of the Pays de Bray iron ore and slag is determined considering MnO and P₂O₅ contents as a first rough filter and seven couples of trace elements. Then, the major and trace elements are analysed using the same methods in the slag inclusions of 32 artefacts from the Beauvais and Rouen churches, made by the bloomery process. The trace element signature of the inclusions from each artefact is compared with the ore from the Pays de Bray area. The iron used in the Rouen and Beauvais churches seems not to come mainly from the Pays de Bray.     

Overdone overkill – the archaeological perspective on Tasmanian megafaunal extinctions

The reasons for megafaunal extinction in Australia have been hotly debated for over 30 years without any clear resolution. The proposed causes include human overkill, climate, anthropogenic induced habitat change or a combination of these. Most protagonists of the human overkill model suggest the impact was so swift, occurring within a few thousand years of human occupation of the continent, that archaeological evidence should be rare or non-existent. In Tasmania the presence of extinct megafauna has been known since the early twentieth century (74, 85 and 86) with earlier claims of human overlap being rejected because of poor chronology and equivocal stratigraphic associations. More recent archaeological research has not identified any megafauna from the earliest, exceptionally well-preserved late Pleistocene cultural sites. In 2008 however an argument for human induced megafaunal extinctions was proposed using the direct dates from a small sample of surface bone from two Tasmanian non-human caves and a museum sediment sample from an unknown location in a cave, since destroyed by quarrying (Turney et al., 2008). Turney et al. (2008) supplemented their data with published dates from other Tasmanian caves and open sites to argue for the survival of at least seven megafauna species from the last interglacial to the subsequent glacial stage.     

Slag inclusion analyses for studying ferrous alloys employed in French medieval buildings: supply of materials and diffusion of smelting processes

This paper aims to propose a data treatment method in order to efficiently exploit the major element compositional analyses made on slag inclusions (SI) of ferrous archaeological artefacts. This method is employed to study the reinforcements used in medieval monuments. The first part of the paper shows: (i) that SI composition can be very variable in an artefact and that it is necessary to analyse a sufficiently redundant number of inclusions; and (ii) that on the one hand a local concentration effect and, on the other hand additives during forging can cause this variability. Nevertheless, after filtering this data, it is showed that specific compounds (called here Non-Reduced Compounds – NRC) have in most of cases a constant ratio in the SI. This allows to evidence the signature of the system (ore, charcoal and pollutant) that produced the ferrous alloys. Moreover, a weighted average compound can be extracted from the results. It is demonstrated that, considering some specific elements with a different behaviour in the direct and indirect processes, it is possible to differentiate the two processes. A methodology is then proposed and applied to several samples gathered on different French medieval buildings to follow the diffusion of the indirect process in France.     

A review of rock art dating in the Kimberley, Western Australia

This paper critically reviews the various approaches used to estimate the age of the rock art in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. They include: (i) the relative superimposition of styles; (ii) the use of diagnostic subject matter (depictions of extinct animals, stone tool technology, introduced European and Asian objects and animals); (iii) the recovery of a ‘painted’ slab from a dated archaeological unit; (iv) radiocarbon dating of beeswax figures, charcoal pigments, organic matter in overlying mineral deposits and ‘accreted paint layers’ (oxalate rich crusts and amorphous silica skin), pollen grains from an overlaying mud-wasp nest; and (v) optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating of quartz grains from overlying mud-wasp nests. Future directions for rock art dating in the Kimberley include uranium-series dating of overlying and underlying mineral deposits.     

Dynamiques hydrogéomorphologiques historiques et actuelles d'une rivière perturbée par les activités de la drave et analyse des impacts d'un démantèlement de barrage

In Quebec, the fluvial dynamics of the Escoumins River have been disturbed by the forestry industry for over a century. Most specifically, a dam was built near the mouth of the river in 1846 and dismantled in 2013. These disturbances had significant repercussions on the equilibrium of the river and Atlantic salmon habitat. This study therefore proposes to characterize the fluvial dynamics of the Escoumins River and to analyze the impacts of the dam dismantling from the perspective of restoring hydrogeomorphological processes and improving Atlantic salmon habitat. The results suggest that the trajectory of the river evolved differently depending on the fluvial style and the grain size composition of each of its homogeneous segments. However, log drive activities in river and dam removal appear to have been the most important controlling factors on the evolution of the stream trajectory. The dismantling notably allowed the restoration of hydrogeomorphological processes and the free movement of salmonids. A better procedure for dam removal and monitoring should be put in place in Canada to encourage this practice.     

The Canadian Rebellion,the American South,and Slavery

ABSTRACT

In the past few decades, thanks in large part to the work of several historians that appears in my edited collection, Revolutions Across Borders: Jacksonian America and the Canadian Rebellion (2019), there is a growing trend to consider the Canadian Rebellion within an American historical and historiographical context. Despite this exciting new research, most studies on the Rebellion and the United States continue to focus on the northern borderland. However, the Canadian Rebellion was a significant event that gained attention all over the United States, including the American South. Similar to the North, the American South was also invested in the outcome of the Rebellion. This was due to one reason: slavery. By specifically focusing on the American South and, more importantly, its influence on American foreign policy during the period, I want to encourage historians to take a more definitive stance; that slavery—just like the Panic of 1837, the Anglo-American rapprochement of thepost-War-of-1812 period, or the fear of British retaliation—played a major role in the United States Government’s official opposition to the Rebellion.