And now back to the paleolithic with your host Dwayne Merry

Dwayne Merry, Project Director. Dimensions in Cultures. Video Tape Series. Available from Coast Community College District, 1370 Adams Avenue, Coasta Mesa, California 92626. Price to be negotiated.     

Statistical means for identifying hunter–gatherer residential features in a lithic landscape

Techniques are described for extracting circular rock features from landscapes dominated by clasts of the same type from which cultural features are composed, using as a test case a large stone circle residential site in western Wyoming, USA. Methods consist of point plotting all relevantly-sized culturally and naturally-deposited clasts in the field and identifying potential cultural features using point density analyses tools in ArcGIS. Potential rings are either accepted or rejected as cultural features by comparing clast frequency, density and distribution in internal, feature-ring, and external spatial buffers to ethnoarchaeological data recording stone circle size and morphology and to similar data generated from a control sample of off-site, naturally-occurring clasts. The results of the analysis are used to discuss group size, mobility type, and duration of site occupation and to explore problems of assessing such at surface archaeological sites resulting from palimpsest-type site formation processes.     

Citizenship,property rights and dispossession in postwar Poland (1918 and 1945)

After both the First and Second World Wars, the Polish state used nationality law as a tool for ethnic de-integration and dispossession, albeit in varying measure and with differing impact. After 1918, legislation and implementation focused less on economic interests than on those of the nation-state. Through the liquidation of private property against compensation, the German population, especially in Western Prussia, Poznań and Pomerelia, were to be persuaded to leave Poland voluntarily. These measures were within the legal framework set by the Versailles Treaties and the national tradition of civil law.     

LEVINAS,HISTORY, AND HISTORIOGRAPHY

In this book Anton Froeyman has provided us with a colorful and intriguing account of a Levinasian approach to historical inquiry and historical writing. In my discussion of his book I describe central features of his account and notice how he uses, to develop his view, recent developments in historiography—including the work of figures like Natalie Davis and Carlo Ginzburg, in philosophical thinking about history and historiography, and in various postmodern developments. I sketch central features of Levinas's ethical metaphysics and show that Froeyman's focus on Levinas's interest in our relations with other persons and in particular with their relative differences from us is too narrow. A proper understanding of our infinite responsibility to and for all others, as Levinas portrays it, leads to a broader account than the one Froeyman gives and one that enables us to understand with greater clarity how historiography fits into the Levinasian understanding of our temporal and interpersonal relations with others.     

Late Prehistoric High-Altitude Hunter-Gatherer Residential Occupations in the Argentine Southern Andes

Test excavations were conducted at Risco de los Indios (RDLI), a site at 2480 masl with 29 residential features and a well-developed midden containing abundant floral, faunal, lithic, and ceramic materials. Analyses indicate the site was intensively used ca. 500 cal b.p. as a residential base for groups focused on hunting guanaco, supplemented by locally-available wild flora and fauna as well as domestic beans transported from the lowlands. Ceramic and obsidian artifacts indicate these groups were highly mobile and in contact with groups on the eastern and western margins of the Andes. These patterns compare favorably to those seen in the region’s other high altitude villages. It appears that the development of these patterns began with population increase and economic intensification in the lowlands ca. 2000 cal b.p. and that the move to slightly lower elevation settings like RDLI may have been conditioned by the onset of the Little Ice Age.     

Chinese Indentured Mine Labour and the Dangers Associated with Early 20th Century Deep‐level Mining on the Witwatersrand Gold Mines,South Africa

Trauma analysis in archaeological human remains can aid our understanding of cultural practices, socio‐economic status, environmental and social conditions, and even aspects of a person's occupation. For this reason, fracture patterns and frequencies can be useful in making inferences about the environment people lived and worked in. This is especially true for the 20th century mining industry where unskilled migrant labourers were often subjected to harsh working and living conditions. In this study, the skeletal remains of 36 Chinese indentured mine labourers, who worked and died on the Witwatersrand mines, South Africa, during the period ad 1904–1910, were assessed for evidence of trauma. Historical information suggests that these indentured Chinese labourers were unfamiliar with the workings of deep‐level mines and as a result sustained many work‐related injuries. Analyses suggest low frequencies of ante‐mortem trauma. In the few instances where they occurred, these healed fractures most probably reflect injuries already sustained in China, some time before Chinese indentured employment on the Witwatersrand mines. A high frequency of traumatic lesions, specifically peri‐mortem fractures, however, suggests a drastic shift in their working environment attesting to the hazardous working conditions associated with deep‐level mining in the early 20th century. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.