A regional examination of surgery and fracture treatment in Iron Age and Roman Britain

The study macroscopically examined 270 sexed adults and 190 subadult individuals for evidence of ante mortem fractures and surgical practice in Dorset, during the Iron Age (5th century BC to 1st century AD) and Romano‐British period (1st century to the end of the 4th century AD), in order to understand medical treatment in both periods and determine the extent to which these practices changed post conquest (43 AD). As treatment during these periods is not well understood, a conservative approach to fracture analysis was employed, which attempted to minimise the influence of fracture type and location on results by excluding bones in which fracture deformities may only be corrected by surgery. The study also excluded fractures resulting from bone mineralisation diseases or neoplasms. Skeletal evidence for surgical treatment was identified using funerary, taphonomic and osteological criterion to determine when the surgery took place, and to establish that changes were not caused by post mortem activity. The analysis of fracture treatment demonstrated that in both periods, adult fractures were well set with few secondary changes; a result also influenced by the stable nature of the fracture types. No evidence for sex‐differences in treatment was observed. Evidence for surgery was identified in two Romano‐British individuals: an unsuccessful limb amputation, and an embryotomy procedure that was most likely carried out in an attempt to save the mother. This regional assessment of medical treatment has shown that in both periods, highly skilled practitioners were able to successfully treat a range of fractures and by doing so, minimised the patient's risk of impairment. The study also supplements the very limited archaeological evidence for medical practice and surgery in Iron Age and Roman Britain, and suggests that post conquest, surgical knowledge rapidly increased in association with wider socio‐cultural developments in education, pharmacology and sanitation. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The pre-AD 585 extension of the U.S. Southwest archaeomagnetic reference curve

A set of 104 independently dated archaeomagnetic directions was used to extend the U.S. Southwest reference curve back to 375 cal BC and to calculate isolated mean VGPs centered on 960 cal BC and 2390 cal BC. Prior to this study, most U.S. Southwest reference curves extended to only ca. AD 585. This study employed Sternberg’s moving window technique with variably sized windows, rather than fixed windows, to smooth the dataset into a continuous curve. The size of each averaging window was determined by the density of data captured by the window, such that each window had a minimum data density of 5.0 and a minimum window size of 50 years. This approach differs from previous studies in the U.S. Southwest, which have applied a uniformly sized averaging window to a dataset regardless of the temporal distribution of the data.     

ENCOUNTERING INDIGENEITY: RE-IMAGINING AND DECOLONIZING GEOGRAPHY

ABSTRACT. In an era of postcolonialism and postcolonization, Indigenous struggles continue. Within 'settler societies' issues of dispossession—particularly of lands—remain largely unresolved. As part of the discipline of geography's active movement away from its colonizing project, this introduction to this special edition of Geografiska Annaler B seeks to (re)focus a disciplinary lens, and (re)open a dialogue—and potential research trajectory - about 'indigenous geographies'. As the papers in this special issue demonstrate, new cultural geographies have begun a process of re-engagement with issues of indigeniety through careful, sensitive, inclusive, representative and emancipatory research projects.     

The Ethnoarchaeology of Juvenile Foragers: Shellfishing Strategies among Meriam Children

Recognizing children's contribution to the archaeological record may be crucial for our ideas about the role of children in human evolution. Despite this, analyses of children's activities and how they might shape archaeological patterns are almost entirely absent from discussions about site formation processes. This may in turn result from the assumption that children are either inconsequential in their foraging activities or that identifying children's activities archaeologically will be difficult if not impossible. This challenge drew our attention toward children's intertidal gathering among the Meriam of the Eastern Torres Strait as a possible agent of patterned and predictable variability in shell middens. We present an analysis of differences between the prey choice and field processing strategies of children and adults and explore an hypothesis for predicting their archaeological effects on faunal assemblage variability.     

Coarse Earthenware at the Dutch Colonial Cape of Good Hope, South Africa: A History of Local Production and Typology of Products

Coarse earthenware production at the Dutch East India Company (VOC) Cape settlement began shortly after the Company established its mercantile entrepôt on the shores of Table Bay in 1652. Made by European Company potters, these vessels reproduced the forms of the homeland in the raw materials of the colony. A history of VOC pottery manufacture and a typological examination of the products illustrates how the global movements of mercantile capitalism combined with the local circumstances of the Cape settlement to create a material form reminiscent of Europe, but purely colonial in the dynamics of its production and use.     

Role playing: a feminist-geopolitical analysis of the everyday workings of the Mexican state

Participatory methods are increasingly important to geographical research of ‘the everyday,’ yet their viability as a means to understand on-the-ground geopolitical processes has been less explored. This article contributes to the growing body of literature on participatory research in geography and feminist geopolitics by arguing for the use of a specific participatory tool – role play. We present an example of our employment of the technique in a case study on using the method during research with Central American immigrants living in the Mexico–Guatemala border city of Tapachula, Mexico. In doing so, we provide an in-depth examination of the implementation of role play, demonstrating its usefulness in revealing immigrant women's daily experiences with low- to mid-level state actors as they seek to avail themselves of their rights. We conclude that role play is particularly well suited to revealing these experiences due to its encouragement of creativity, embodiment through performance and facilitation of in-depth discussion of difficult subject matter.     

Being Toured While Digging Tourism: Excavating the Familiar at Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition

Chicago’s Jackson Park witnessed intense and sustained tourism during the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Recent archaeological survey and excavation produced information about the tourist experience of the Fair in a somewhat familiar artifactural form. The dig drew local tourists whose appetites for the Exposition were whetted by a bestselling book. At the heart of these multiple touristic consumptions in, and of, Jackson Park lies the central issue—the way that tourists create themselves as modern subjects through the practice of tourism and how this process can be both helped and hindered by the presence of familiar objects.     

The Significance of Social Gestures and Technologies of Embellishment in Paleolithic Portable Art

This paper analyzes the gestures and technologies used to make Paleolithic portable art. Contextualized within the theoretical schools of the anthropology of technology and using the chaîne opératoire methodology, the approach advanced here quantifies the relationships between technology, society, and aesthetics in the production of Paleolithic art. Focusing on Pavlovian art, dating to between 28,000 and 24,000 radiocarbon years BP, this paper assesses the suite of art production technologies, particularly those used when modifying and decorating ivory, and traces the relationship between decorative techniques and other characteristics of art. These analyses offer insight into Pavlovian art traditions and the emergence of innovative techniques in Paleolithic societies.