A comparative geochemical study of bituminous boat remains from H3, As-Sabiyah (Kuwait), and RJ-2, Ra's al-Jinz (Oman)

This paper presents a geochemical analysis of fragments of bituminous amalgam from H3, As‐Sabiyah (Kuwait), and RJ‐2, Ra's al‐Jinz (Oman). The fragments bear barnacles on one side and reed impressions on the other, and are thought to have been part of the coating of reed‐bundle boats. The material from H3 dates to between 5300–4900 BC, while that of RJ‐2 dates to 2500–2100 BC. Samples from both sites were geochemically compared to archaeological and ethnographic material from Kosak Shamali (northern Syria, c.5000–4400 BC), RH‐5 (Oman, 4400–3500 BC) and Baghdad (central Iraq, 1900 AD). The composition of the bituminous amalgams was studied in detail. Rock‐Eval Pyrolysis gave a measure of Total Organic Carbon in the samples, and allowed an initial comparison of the data sets using various parameters. Examination of the proportions of soluble and insoluble organic matter allowed an assessment of the quantity of vegetal matter added to the bitumen to make the bituminous amalgam. The composition of the Ra's al‐Jinz material was studied using X‐Ray Diffraction analysis and thin‐section petrography, in order to assess the proportions of various minerals in the bituminous amalgams. It was concluded that the recipe for the bituminous mixture used to coat reed‐bundle and wooden boats did not differ significantly from that commonly used to make ‘mortar’ for architectural purposes in Mesopotamia. Traces of animal fats or fish oils were not found in the analysed Ra's al‐Jinz material, in contrast to previous hypotheses regarding the composition of the mixture. Comparison of the gross composition of extractable organic matter (the constituents of pure bitumen, soluble in chloroform or dichloromethane) showed the progressive effects of weathering on the samples. The isotopic composition of the bituminous material from H3 and the other sites was then compared to that of bitumen seeps and crude oils from Mesopotamia, Iran and Oman. The most significant result is that the material from As‐Sabiyah originated in Kuwait, at a surface seep at Burgan, while the material from Ra's al‐Jinz had a source in northern Mesopotamia.     

Policy Entrepreneurship and Policy Change

This article reviews the concept of policy entrepreneurship and its use in explaining policy change. Although the activities of policy entrepreneurs have received close attention in several studies, the concept of policy entrepreneurship is yet to be broadly integrated within analyses of policy change. To facilitate more integration of the concept, we here show how policy entrepreneurship can be understood within more encompassing theorizations of policy change: incrementalism, policy streams, institutionalism, punctuated equilibrium, and advocacy coalitions. Recent applications of policy entrepreneurship as a key explanation of policy change are presented as models for future work. Room exists for further conceptual development and empirical testing concerning policy entrepreneurship. Such work could be undertaken in studies of contemporary and historical policy change.     

Powerful Pots,Humbling Holes,and Regional Ritual Processes: Towards an Archaeology of Huedan Vodun,ca. 1650–1727

Situated along the “Slave Coast” of West Africa, the international coastal trading entrepôt of Ouidah is infamous as the point of embarkation for hundreds of thousands of people spirited into the Middle Passage. Accordingly, scholars have looked to it and the surrounding region as a font of culture and history for diasporic groups. In scholarly narratives, the larger Gbe-speaking region surrounding Ouidah is characterized as the homeland of Vodun, a religious tradition that influenced diasporic religions throughout the Atlantic world. This paper explores early Huedan Vodun at a local level and works to bolster, and at the same time problematize, the project of addressing Vodun at increasing geographic scales and temporal depths. It builds on longstanding research which recognizes that context is critical for interpreting possible ritual or religious significance of archaeological material.     

Heritage vs. History: Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy as a “Physician of Memory”

In a paper presented to the American Historical Association annual meeting in 1934, entitled “The Predicament of History,” Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy (1888–1973) argued that professional (or “scientific”) historians had lost touch with collective memory and were engaged in a free-floating enterprise connected to the vital past only arbitrarily or randomly. Historians should be the physicians of memory, he said. His admonitions relate closely to the stress, often discussed today, between popular heritage, or tradition and memory, on the one side, and critical history, on the other, each vying for influence and authority. Beyond his 1934 paper, Rosenstock-Huessy’s grammatical method opens the way for complementarity and balance, rather than antagonism, between the popular voice and critical history.     

Ethnicity,world view,and experience in two Mesoamerican communities

Gregory G. Reck. In the Shadow of Tlaloc: Life in a Mexican Village. New York: Penguin Books, 1978. 224 pp. Photographs. $3.95.

Kay B. Warren. The Symbolism of Subordination: Indian Identity in a Guatemalan Town. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978. xii + 209 pp. Photographs, references and bibliography. $11.95.     

Imperial Rome and Britain's Language of Empire 1600–1837

Britain's pre-Victorian overseas expansion stimulated Roman comparisons. But imperial Rome was a warning as much as an inspiration to future empires, a harsh and uncomfortable model for Britain as a former Roman colony. Roman dignity was claimed for British monarchs and achievements by Dryden and others. But there were mixed feelings about identifying expanding Britain as a second Roman Empire. In the eighteenth century the British freedom-fighter Caractacus, defeated by the Romans, appealed far more to popular taste than Virgil's Aeneas or the Emperor Augustus. Sustained unease about imperial Rome, going right back to Tacitus, anticipated the liberal critique of imperialism of some Victorian and Edwardian commentators.