USS <Emphasis Type="Italic">Independence’s</Emphasis> Aircraft

Submerged aircraft are a newly emerging area of study in underwater archaeology. In August 2016, a multidisciplinary team conducted the first archaeological survey of the deep water (829 m) wreck of the ex-USS Independence (CVL22), a WWII era light carrier scuttled off San Francisco after its use as an atomic bomb test target and subsequently as a floating radiological laboratory and training facility. Using the remotely operated vehicles Argus and Hercules, the expedition documented and studied Independence including assessment of a sonar target thought to be an aircraft resting inside the sunken carrier’s forward elevator pit. The survey confirmed the presence of a plane, but previous assumptions as to the type and identity of this aircraft, based on archival records, proved erroneous. As well, the remains of a second, and possibly a third, aircraft were also encountered during the 2016 survey. These artifacts, through their context, both as naval warplanes on an aircraft carrier, and as test articles for seaborne nuclear weapons development, more precisely fit within the parameters of maritime archaeology. They join other archaeological evidence at the Independence site that helps define its significance within the context of World War II and the Cold War.     

Pagan: the archaeology of a WWII battle never fought in the Northern Mariana Islands

Archaeological and historical investigation of WWII battles fought in the Micronesian archipelago of the Mariana Islands has generally concentrated on the fierce struggles for Saipan, Tinian, and Guam. Smaller islands that were neutralised during the U.S. thrust to establish air bases for the bombing campaign over Japan beginning in 1944 have received less attention, but were a strategic link in the Absolute National Defence Sphere. This paper examines the archaeological evidence of Japanese military planning for the defence of the island of Pagan situated north of Saipan, a battle that was never fought. The strategy based on an analysis of fixed weaponry emplacement appears to have been conceived in terms of engagement evolving from a ‘defence-at-the-waters-edge’ tactic in the southern Mariana Islands towards a ‘defence-in-depth’ posture faced in Iwo Jima and Okinawa.     

Geophysical investigations of WWII air-raid shelters in the UK

Just before WWII, the British government prepared for an aerial onslaught that was predicted to raze cities and cause mass casualties. By 1938, the Air Raid Precautions Act officially stated that population protection would be through dispersal, meaning evacuation and small-scale protection, local authority responsibility often devolving to householders. Archaeological records of remaining air-raid shelters are relatively rare and under threat. This paper reports on geophysical surveys on three sites in Stoke-on-Trent and London. Results found three intact Stanton shelters in Stoke-on-Trent, located by GPR, electrical resistivity, magnetometry, gravity and electromagnetic methods. In London, partially demolished shelters and an intact, mass public shelter were both detected by EM and GPR methods, with subsequent intrusive investigations confirming results. Study outcomes show hitherto-neglected wartime shelters are in varied condition, with geophysical surveys able to detect, characterise and assess them, helping bring WWII British history into the wider scientific community and public domain.     

Organization of ceramic production at a fortified Early Bronze Age settlement in Moravia (Czech Republic) inferred from minimally destructive archaeometry

This paper explores how pottery production was organized at fortified sites of central Europe at the end of the Early Bronze Age. The organization of pottery production in terms of ethnography-based models was inferred jointly by non-destructive multi-elemental analysis, micropetrography and powder X-ray diffraction. This minimally destructive approach was used to explore the mode of pottery production at the fortified central site Blu?ina (Moravia, Czech Republic). Archaeometry-based indirect evidence indicates that tableware of a specific shape was produced using a specific technology at the site or in its close vicinity and that coarse ware was brought to the site from elsewhere. The results obtained were complexly evaluated and compared with ethnography-based categorizations to reveal the features of production organization of the Early Bronze Age pottery. Multidimensional analysis classified the production as intensified household labour and work of individual retainers, or nucleated corvée, depending on its scale and intensity.     

Glassmaking using natron from el-Barnugi (Egypt); Pliny and the Roman glass industry

Pliny the Elder describes the discovery of a process for making natron glass, which was widely used for much of the first millennium bc and ad. His account of glassmaking with natron has since been corroborated by analyses of archaeological glass and the discovery of large-scale glass production sites where natron glass was made and then exported. Analyses of Egyptian natron have shown it to be a complex mixture of different sodium compounds, and previous experiments to make glass with Egyptian natron have been unsuccessful. Here, natron from el-Barnugi in the Egyptian Nile delta, a site which also probably supplied Roman glassmakers, is used to produce glass. The experiments show that high-quality glass, free of unreacted batch or bubbles, could have been produced from natron in its unprocessed form in a single stage, that larger quantities of natron would be required than has previously been anticipated, that the presence of different sodium-containing compounds in the deposit aided melting, and that negligible waste is produced. The implications for the identification of glass production sites, for the organisation of trade and for the supply of natron within and outside Egypt are discussed in the light of Pliny’s accounts.     

The shrinkage cracks and the diameter of the log: a experimental approach toward fuel management by Patagonian hunter-gatherer (Paredón Lanfré site. Río Negro Province,Argentin)

The anthracological study of Paredón Lanfré (Patagonia, Argentina) highlights the presence of radial cracks with a marked difference between the percentage of affected coniferous charcoal (Fitzroya cupressoides and Austrocedrus chilensis) compared to the angiosperms (e.g., Nothofagus antarctica and Nothofagus dombeyi). The aim of this work was to obtain experimental comparison data from two Patagonian conifers to understand the prehistoric combustion behavior of the region. These results showed a discrepancy between the average of shrinkage cracks made with green wood fires and those with dry wood fires. The study of the caliber of charcoal recovered from Paredón Lanfré showed significant differences between the samples of F. cupressoides and A. chilensis. The calculation of correlation between size and shrinkage cracks suggests for both species that the size is not related to the number of registered shrinkage cracks in charcoal studied. Therefore, the gauge would not be a variable which could influence the presence of shrinkage cracks in the charcoal. Consequently, the difference of average shrinkage cracks between the two specimens may result from another variable that remains to be identified.     

The benefits of foreign policy bipartisanship revisited: lessons from two Canadian cases

Although foreign policy bipartisanship in Westminster systems is often heralded as a normative good, there is an emerging scholarship which suggests that a bipartisan approach to foreign and defence policy comes with considerable costs. This article seeks to join that debate. It does so by examining two contemporary foreign/defence policy issues in Canadian politics: the mission in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014 and the efforts to replace the CF-18 Hornet flown by the Royal Canadian Air Force. These two cases do not offer clear conclusions about the normative argument about foreign policy bipartisanship. The embrace of a bipartisan approach to the Afghanistan mission confirms the criticism that bipartisanship can suppress public debate and did indeed distort a consideration of policy options. But the case of the CF-18 replacement suggests that there are significant costs if government and opposition replace a search for bipartisan consensus on key policy issues with an overt politicisation that seeks partisan advantage by ‘playing politics’ with foreign and defence policy issues, concluding that the quality of partisanship is a necessary condition to avoid the dysfunctions and costs of bipartisanship.