Royal authority versus corporate sovereignty: the Levant Company and the ambiguities of early Stuart statecraft

The ambassadorship of Thomas Bendish (1646–1660) to the Ottoman Porte was a period of turmoil that saw the arrest and imprisonment of his predecessor, Sackville Crowe, and the arrest and subsequent beheading of a usurper, Henry Hyde. This crisis in Turkey coincided with the domestic crisis of the English Civil War, which plunged the English state into chaos. This article uses the Bendish/Crowe/Hyde affair to analyse the relationship between state and trading company in order to gain a deeper understanding of how the early modern economic and state-building system of mercantilism was made. The article will show that mercantilism was, in the words of Phil Stern, an “awkward alliance” where merchant and state required one another while remaining suspicious of the other’s motives and authority.     

The Women of Brassempouy: A Century of Research and Interpretation

  The discovery of female figurines at Brassempouy in the 1890's would launch more than a century of debate and interpretation concerning Paleolithic representations of women. The figurines emerged from the ground into a colonial intellectual and socio-political context nearly obsessed with matters of race. This early racial interpretive frame would only be replaced in the mid 20th century, when prehistorians turned to questions such as fertility and womanhood. The first figurines were discovered in 1892 under rather tortured circumstances in which their very ownership was the subject of a heated dispute between Edouard Piette and Emile Cartailhac. Their toxic relationship would lead Piette, in his subsequent excavations, to be extremely precise about issues of stratigraphic and spatial provenience. Piette's publications and archives enabled Henri Delporte to confirm the Gravettian attribution of the figurines and have allowed the present author to create a map of their spatial distribution within the site. Technological and microscopic analysis of the Brassempouy figurines resolves some lingering questions about the sex of certain of the figurines and suggests an original context of figurine fabrication and the abandonment of unsuccessful sculpting attempts.

Isotopic Determination of Seasonality in Diet and Death from Nubian Mummy Hair

Sections of human hair from naturally desiccated Sudanese Nubian mummies representing X-Group (AD 350-550) and Christian (AD 550-1300) periods in the Wadi Halfa area have been analysed for their isotope ratios. Because the carbon in hair represents food intake over the growth period of this tissue, analysis comparing segments taken next to the scalp with those further along the shaft can indicate diet just prior to death as well as any recent shift in food consumption. Modern populations in this area practise seasonal crop scheduling which involves the cultivation of C₃ plants (wheat, barley and most fruits and vegetables) in the winter and the hardier C₄ plants (sorghum and millet) in the summer. Shifting isotopic values along the length of hair strands of the ancient inhabitants of this area demonstrate that this practice has its roots at least as far back as the Initial Phase of Intensive Agriculture. The most common season of death appears to have been summer, the time of greatest climatic, nutritional and physiological stress for both ancient and modern inhabitants.     

Archaeological and chemical evidence for the earliest American use of raw coal as a fuel in ironmaking

The archaeological discovery of bituminous coal in the tipple area and the subsequent analyses of specimens of the iron ore, charcoal, limestone, slag, and cast iron from the Eaton (Hopewell) blast furnace built in 1802 indicate that raw coal was used in combination with charcoal as a fuel in American iron smelting at least thirty years before it was used alone. Further, its use in this combinatory manner marks the earliest as yet attested to in the New World.     

Book reviews

THE STUDY OF POLITICS: A COLLECTION OF INAUGURAL LECTURES. Preston King (ed). London, Cass, 1977, pp 322.

JAPAN AT THE POLLS: The House of Councillors Elections of 1974. Michael K. Blaker (ed.), American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Washington, D.C. 157 pp. ISBN 0–8447–3213–3, $US3.00.

MANKIND'S FUTURE IN THE PACIFIC. R.F. Scagel (ed.), Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1976, $10.50 paperback.

THE EEC AND AUSTRALIA. J.D.B. Miller. Nelson, in association with A.I.I.A., Melbourne, 1976. pp. x, 137.

UNEQUAL ALLIES. AUSTRALIAN‐AMERICAN RELATIONS AND THE PACIFIC WAR. Roger J. Bell. M.U.P., 1977, 278 pp.

WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION AND THE ENVIRONMENT. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Taylor & Francis Ltd., London, 1977 pp. 95. L5.