Assessing the Diversity of Mission Populations through the Comparison of Native American Residences at Mission Santa Clara de Asís

Mission establishments in Alta California and elsewhere were home to complex, pluralistic communities in which native peoples actively but differentially negotiated aspects of colonialism through daily practice and the reinterpretation of identity. To explore these issues, we compare the archaeological evidence from two different indigenous dwellings at California’s Mission Santa Clara de Asís: an adobe barracks and a native-style thatched house. In particular, we consider possible differences between the dwellings’ inhabitants in terms of relative status, ethnolinguistic affiliation, and re-articulation of indigenous traditions.     

Early Neolithic diet and animal husbandry: stable isotope evidence from three Linearbandkeramik (LBK) sites in Central Germany

The first appearance of the Neolithic Linearbandkeramik (LBK) in Central Germany occurred during the 6th millennium BC. However, though LBK sites are abundant in the German loess areas, there are only a few studies that reconstruct the diet of these first farmers using biochemical methods. Here we present the largest study undertaken to date on LBK material using stable isotope analysis of carbon and nitrogen to reconstruct human diet and animal husbandry strategies. We analyzed the bone collagen of 97 human individuals and 45 associated animals from the sites of Derenburg, Halberstadt and Karsdorf in the Middle Elbe–Saale region of Central Germany. Mean adult human values are ?19.9 ± 0.4‰ for δ¹³C and 8.7 ± 0.8‰ for δ¹⁵N. The δ¹³C values are typical for terrestrial, temperate European regions, whereas the δ¹⁵N values fall within an expected range for farming societies with a mixed diet consisting of products from domestic animals and plants. The consumption of unfermented dairy products is unlikely as there is direct palaeogenetic evidence of lactose intolerance available for one of the sites. There are no clear indications for dietary differences in sex. Young children under three years of age are enriched in δ¹⁵N due to breastfeeding indicating that weaning likely occurred around the age of three years. The fauna exhibit mean δ¹³C values of ?20.9 ± 0.8‰ and mean δ¹⁵N values of 7.0 ± 0.9‰ respectively. Variation in the δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N in the domestic animals is probably caused by different livestock managements.     

Hybrid Uptakes of Neoliberal Conservation in Namibian Tourism‐based Development

Neoliberal conservation schemes involving nature‐based tourism are implemented throughout the developing world to address rural poverty. Drawing on socio‐economic surveys and in‐depth interviews, this article uses the case of Uibasen Conservancy in Namibia to investigate social responses to neoliberal conservation. We find that people's aspirations for upward economic and social mobility lead them to participate in neoliberal conservation projects in an attempt to combine economic opportunities created by nature‐based tourism with traditional livelihood strategies. In this case, certain aspects of neoliberal conservation are perceived as a source of hope for non‐elites seeking to achieve economic self‐sufficiency and to ascend social hierarchies. We find that intra‐community power struggles dominate discourses of discontent and local‐level conflict which consequently masks the disruptive and anomic forces of the global tourism industry. We additionally provide insight into specific social contexts that may increase the allure of neoliberal conservation and explain why marginalized individuals may embrace some neoliberal logics despite — or, perhaps, because of — their disruptive tendencies.     

Facetiming common worlds: exchanging digital place stories and crafting pedagogical contact zones

ABSTRACT

Children, educators, and researchers at a child care center in Victoria, Canada and Melbourne, Australia have been collaborating on an early childhood education pedagogical inquiry project that grapples with children’s relations with place and technologies. Resisting narratives of environmental stewardship and instrumental digital education that dominate in the settler colonial contexts of contemporary Canadian and Australian early childhood education, this article shares stories, practices, questions, and tensions generated within the inquiry. After outlining how we think with Facetime on iPhone within a common worlds pedagogies framework, we detail two practices generated in the inquiry: (1) exchanging digital place stories and (2) crafting pedagogical contact zones with place and technologies. These practices, we argue, make visible how our collaboration reconfigures children’s relationships with place and technologies in consequential ways, and risks generating uneasy, unfamiliar, and tentative pedagogies that respond to messy entanglements within digital, more-than-human common worlds.     

Revisioning the Past,Remembering the Future: Duna Accounts of the World's End

Taking as my example, the memories of Duna people at Lake Kopiago, who inhabit the northwestern part of the Southern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea, I illustrate some of the ways events, and memories of them, have been constructed, manipulated and recast over the last twenty five years. By paying particular attention to a well known originary narrative, I show that space, the revelation of new knowledge via a spirit medium and the reinterpretation and negotiation of the meanings attached to events can result in the production of new memories about the past and the future.     

COMMUNITY,OBLIGATION, AND FOOD: LESSONS FROM THE MORAL GEOGRAPHY OF INUIT

Using Inuit as an illustration, this article discusses what it means to live in community, and argues that by taking people's moral geographies into account one may understand more fully the make‐up of community. The article maintains that their moral geography creates a feeling among Inuit of obligation for the other. It is this obligation that serves as the basis for community. The article theorizes about the implications of internalized mores based on obligation, and discusses how, in contrast to the concept of rights, such mores contribute to the formation and maintenance of community. The article concludes that developing a situated understanding of people's moral geographies may help to expand our comprehension of community construction and maintenance.