Slash and Trash: Dendroarchaeological and Ecological Inferences from a Twentieth-Century Logging Camp in Western New Mexico

Logging related sites and features are relatively common in forested areas of the western United States. Such sites are typically investigated through site mapping and artifact recording, and if possible, oral history. We present the results of a dendroarchaeological investigation of a small-scale unauthorized logging site in western New Mexico, US. The results provide information on the economic and social forces that created the site, as well as the scale of activities conducted there. We suggest that individuals quickly responded to improved lumber market conditions and changes in public land administration to exploit what had been an economically marginal timber stand.     

Colonial Institutions: Uses,Subversions, and Material Afterlives

Archaeologically based explorations of colonialism or institutions are common case-studies in global historical archaeology, but the “colonial institution”—the role of institutions as operatives of colonialism—has often been neglected. In this thematic edition we argue that in order to fully understand the interconnected, global world one must explicitly dissect the colonial institution as an entwined, dual manifestation that is central to understanding both power and power relations in the modern world. Following Ann Laura Stoler, we have selected case studies from the Australia, Europe, UK and the USA which reveal that the study of colonial institutions should not be limited to the functional life of these institutions—or solely those that take the form of monumental architecture—but should include the long shadow of “imperial debris” (Stoler 2008) and immaterial institutions.     

Ghosts of Sorrow,Sin and Crime: Dark Tourism and Convict Heritage in Van Diemen’s Land,Australia

Established as a British imperial penal colony, Van Diemen’s Land received approximately 75,000 convicts before cessation of convict transportation in 1853. A vast network of penal stations and institutions were created to accommodate, employ, administer, and discipline these exiled felons. Popular interpretations of Australia’s convict past highlight dynamics of shame, avoidance and active obliteration that characterized Australia’s relationship to its recent convict past. Yet, closer examination of these colonial institutions suggests a far more ambivalent relationship with this “dark heritage,” evidenced by continuous tourism and visitation to these places of pain and shame from the mid-nineteenth century to the present.     

Quarantine Matters: Colonial Quarantine at North Head,Sydney and Its Material and Ideological Ruins

Australia’s quarantine regulations have their roots in colonial practice. This paper is concerned with the “matter” of quarantine—its location, spatialization, and materialization—and the ways in which it contributed to the colonial agenda. Through an exploration of Sydney’s North Head Quarantine Station, quarantine is shown to be a technology through which the colony and the continent were framed as simultaneously pure and vulnerable. These colonial roots of quarantine practice are then brought back to the present, drawing on Stoler’s (2008) concept of “imperial debris” to contemplate the contemporary ruins, both material and ideological, of colonial quarantine practice.     

From Goose Drops to Spec Ops: A Pinfire Shotgun Shell from Fort York

In 2011, during a salvage excavation at the Fort York National Historic Site, Archaeological Services Inc. (ASI) recovered a pinfire shotgun shell cartridge. This unique small find tells a story of the ebb and flow of the firearms technology used by armed forces around the world. It also shows how the pinfire shotgun was likely brought to Fort York in response to the Trent Affair. This international incident during the American Civil War risked a return to hostilities between Britain and the United States and sparked a defensive rearmament across the colony of Canada. This artifact also highlights the military evolution of the shotgun from a hunting tool brought to the battlefield by ragtag militia, to cutting edge weaponry used by military special forces around the world.     

Shipwrecks as Archaeological Signatures of a Maritime Industrial Frontier in the Solomon Islands, 1788–1942

This paper examines the nineteenth- and twentieth-century non-indigenous presence in the Solomon Islands as an example of a maritime industrial frontier. In particular it employs a combination of frontier and maritime cultural landscape theories to consider the material and cognitive elements that inform us about how a maritime industrial frontier was shaped and operated, including the relationships between shipwrecks, maritime infrastructure, nodal points of activity and indigenous agency. The integrated analysis of these elements reveals distinct maritime patterns considered indicative of the broader economic, political and social concerns occurring on this frontier on the peripheries of the Western European World System.     

Challenges in Archaeological Tourism in China

Worldwide archaeological tourism, or tourism to sites with archaeological significance, has been rapidly growing and has attracted increased academic attention in recent years. China is an outstanding case in this field. In fact, its government has been actively promoting tourism and archaeological tourism for the last three decades. The understanding of the challenges that Chinese archaeological tourism is currently facing is the focus of this article. Four aspects will guide the discussion: the dilemma between site preservation and economic profitability, unregulated tourism development, the influence of UNESCO World Heritage designation, and authorities’ sensitivity towards ethnic issues in archaeological tourism.     

Charting a Future Course for Organic Residue Analysis in Archaeology

Working hypotheses, which draw upon as many relevant disciplines as possible to derive the maximum information from a very limited database, are key to the highly interdisciplinary field of organic residue analysis in archaeology, a branch of biomolecular archaeology. Archaeology and chemistry are most important for effectively developing and testing such hypotheses, but botany, zoology, geology, etc. also need to be taken into account. Archaeologically, the goal is to obtain as many relevant samples as possible from the best preserved and dated contexts, which have been subjected to the least degradation and disturbance by later natural processes and human handling, including washing and conservation treatment. Chemically, molecular biomarkers of natural products need to be defined and identified by the best and most appropriate techniques, together with bioinformatics searches and assessment of degradation. With ever-improving techniques and new data, previously analyzed samples need to be retested and hypotheses possibly reformulated. Consideration of three case studies illustrates this holistic approach to inductive hypothesis generation and deductive testing: (1) new chemical findings that attest to grape wine in amphoras on board the 14th c. B.C. Uluburun ship, the earliest recorded Mediterranean wreck; (2) recently published research on beeswax/mead in Chalcolithic Israel and Neolithic China and Poland; and (3) recent articles on milk products from 2nd millennium B.C. Central Asia and Neolithic Poland. Potential pitfalls leading to weak hypotheses and mistaken conclusions are described, and a more productive approach is proposed.