Publishing Archaeological Excavations at the Digital Turn

ABSTRACT

This paper engages with repeated calls within archaeology for a re-envisioning of the excavation report, contextualized by the transformation of scholarly communication taking place across the humanities and social sciences. This widespread transformation is rooted in a growing interest in showing data together with synthesis and argument, the importance afforded to public engagement, and the proliferation of digital platforms that enable creative presentations of scholarly work. In this context, we discuss our experience producing an excavation report that attempts to integrate several forms of scholarly and public-facing communication on a digital platform, and aims to engage audiences at multiple levels, while simultaneously facilitating data reuse and laying out the authors’ current interpretations. We consider the benefits and challenges of producing work in this way through the example of producing the Gabii Project’s first volume, A Mid-Republican House from Gabii, developed through a collaboration between the Gabii Project team and the University of Michigan Press. This experience is contextualized within the broader discourse surrounding changing expectations about open access, authorship and credit, and sustainability of digital scholarship in academic publishing.     

Intimate Oral Histories: Intercultural Romantic Relationships in Postwar Australia

This article examines the experiences of individuals in romantic relationships that crossed ethnic, religious or racial lines in post-World War II Australia. Using interviews from the Australian Generations Oral History Project, supplemented by archival and newspaper material, this article examines how broader changes in immigration and the cultural make-up of Australia in the second half of the twentieth century impacted individual Australians, influencing who they could desire, court and love. Through the narration of intimate life stories, this article attempts to capture the emotional experience of individuals whose relationships, while made possible by national policy decisions, still tested and breached social norms and cultural expectations at the personal and familial level.     

Heteroglossic heritage and the first-place of the Kalahari

Abstract

Using Bakhtin’s concept of ‘heteroglossia,’ this article examines the layering and intersections of multiple claims to heritage places that form dialogics about heritage truths. Social groups derive their collective-self, in part, through association with a place, or places, to which they attribute their origin, described here as a ‘first-place.’ Identity maintenance can occur through the praxis of heritage tourism in which group members exhibit emotional performances during their visits to a first-place. Through the extended example of the Tsodilo Hills in Botswana and the various social groups – local ethnic communities, national citizens, and segments of the global community – who each form a collective-self using Tsodilo as a first-place, this article addresses the roles of science (archaeology) and tourism, and their interplay, in enabling several languages or dialects of belonging to coexist without dissonance. The argument is that heteroglossic heritage is possible because visitors’ affect-mediated encounters with heritage places facilitate the reaffirmation of their shared group identity. While all heritage discourse is heteroglossic, the article focuses on claims to a first-place set within a postcolonial context of nation building and modernising that involves the politicisation and re-spatialization of heritage places through tourism development.     

Youthful escapes? British students,overseas education and the pursuit of happiness

This paper draws upon the findings of a recent project examining the motivations of UK students seeking higher education overseas. We argue that notions of fun, enjoyment and the pursuit of happiness abroad featured strongly in young people's stories, in contrast to an emphasis in recent academic and media accounts on overt strategising around educational decision making. Several students wanted to escape the UK, particularly the rigidity of British higher education; the perceived flexibility of a liberal arts education was extremely appealing. Others saw education overseas as a chance for personal reinvention. Moving the focus away from stressing the negative effects of academic-related pressures upon young people, in this paper, we argue that education can offer up new possibilities for fun and excitement, which for privileged individuals work alongside more strategic objectives around the accumulation of cultural capital.     

Ice Patch Archaeology in Global Perspective: Archaeological Discoveries from Alpine Ice Patches Worldwide and Their Relationship with Paleoclimates

In recent years, in association with global climate change, researchers have found significant quantities of preserved archaeological material melting from kinetically-stable alpine and subalpine ‘ice patches’ all around the world. This paper synthesizes the findings and the methodologies of ice patch archaeology worldwide thus far in an effort to provide researchers with a broadened perspective on artifact collection and interpretation. In addition, I test the hypothesis that increased quantities of alpine ice in prehistory should correlate with decreased human use of these areas, and vice versa. I analyze the relationship between the frequencies of regional artifact dates over time, the nature of these artifacts, and glacial advances and retreats. Ultimately, I conclude that fundamental differences among these assemblages and their correlation (or lack thereof) with prehistoric alpine ice extents stem from the intention and the activity of the people who deposited the artifacts.     

Race,Space, and Nature: An Introduction and Critique

In this essay we put forth nested arguments about the way that racialization remains a powerful force in contemporary society, contending that intersections with space and nature offer important lessons about the (de)construction of race. We argue that the pernicious character traits of racial constructs develop through spatial practices and intersect with ideas about “nature” and belonging. We trace these concepts through recent conversations in geography and environmental studies, and we call for a persistent, critical, and prominent engagement with racialization in the spatial social sciences. Finally, we introduce the papers that constitute this symposium, which engages these questions from a range of perspectives and across a variety of landscapes. We hope to spur the conversation about “race and geography”, broadly conceived, beyond studies conceptualized around race alone. We are hopeful that this work, and the larger body of work it contributes to, travels beyond academic conversations to engage broader social justice debates about the “nature” of racial inequality—to ultimately participate in its dismantlement.