"A wealth of historical interest": the medical artifact collection at the University of Western Ontario

Along with a teaching collection, the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Western Ontario, London, Canada, began accepting medical artifacts for a historical museum in the early 1920s, although it never developed into more than an unofficial collection until the 1970s, when it was transformed into the Medical Museum and Archives at the University Hospital. In the 1990s, the artifacts were dispersed among several local institutions. The remaining objects at the university have been now reorganized as the Medical Artifact Collection. While these objects were once used to educate students about the practice and philosophy of medicine, they are now used to teach students about local, medical, Canadian and public history.     

Multiproxy Analysis of Adhered and Absorbed Food Residues Associated with Pottery

Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory - The application of multiple lines of evidence is necessary to understand past complex behaviors such as diet and cuisine. This paper advocates for the...     

Britishness or Englishness? The Historical Problem of National Identity in Britain

Abstract. The dominant ‘modernisation’ perspective on the nature of nations and national identities characterises these phenomena as purely modern artefacts which function as sociological cement for complex industrial societies. In opposition, Anthony D. Smith has elaborated an ‘ethno-symbolist’ framework which posits the possibility of pre-modern antecedents to modern national identities. According to Smith, modern states which have been able to establish their official cultures on the ethnicity of a demographically dominant and cohesive ethnic core are likely to be more stable than states that are divided by the rival histories and traditions of competing ethno-national communities. This paper evaluates Smith's ethno-symbolist thesis by applying his work on the relationship between states and ethnic cores to the historical example of Britain. What is Britishness? Is it just a transnational state patriotism, or is it a secondary form of national identity constructed largely in English terms?     

Lapita subsistence strategies and food consumption patterns in the community of Teouma (Efate,Vanuatu)

The subsistence strategies of the Lapita populations (3100–2800 BP), the first colonisers of the pristine environments of the islands of Eastern Melanesia and Western Polynesia, have been a matter of ongoing debate for decades. Opinions have ranged between the two extremes of Lapita colonisers being either characterised as highly mobile foragers to fully horticultural communities. To further address the question, this paper presents stable carbon and nitrogen isotopic data obtained from analyses of human and animal collagen samples from the site of Teouma (Efate, Vanuatu) dated to between c. 3000–2500 BP. The isotopic signatures obtained from 28 samples (23 human and 5 animal), interpreted in combination with isotopic information from several coastal and insular environments, suggest a diet primarily made up of terrestrially derived animal protein with lesser contributions from vegetable produce and inshore marine species. Comparisons linking the isotopic data gleaned from the Teouma individuals and Lapita subsistence patterns reconstructed through archaeozoological and archaeobotanical remains support the hypothesis of a mixed economy, that included terrestrial foraging, inshore marine exploitation and a low level of food production for at least some of the earliest Lapita colonists in Vanuatu.