RADIOCARBON DATES FROM THE OXFORD AMS SYSTEM: ARCHAEOMETRY DATELIST 3

This third list of accelerator dates includes material dated in the same period as datelist 2 (Gillespi?et al. 1985) and subsequently. The dates have been achieved by the same methods as described there.     

XRF ANALYSIS OF NONYA WARES USING AN ANNULAR AMERICIUM SOURCE

54 pieces of Nonya wares (also known as Straits Chinese porcelains) were analysed using energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence technique with an annular Am-241 source. Significant time correlation was found for only two elements, barium and cesium, when the ratio of the fluorescent intensity of each element to the intensity of the coherently scattered 26.4 keV gamma was plotted as a function of the time of manufacture. For trace barium, quantitative measurement showed that Nonya wares made from the Ch'ing dynasty to the Republic period had a barium content between 100 and 135 ppm, whereas modern reproduction pieces had much higher values.     

Freedom and migration in the Leeward Caribbean, 1838–1848

At emancipation in the British Caribbean in 1838, newly freed blacks in larger territories established “reconstituted peasantries” on non-plantation lands. Similar village adaptations were impossible on some smaller islands where planters continued to control all of the islands' lands. In St Kitts and Nevis landless freemen emigrated to Trinidad by the hundreds to establish individual independence and to support kinsmen and friends left behind. Within a decade most migrants from St Kitts and Nevis had returned. They had thus carved out a “migration adaptation” in response to planter oppression at home and livelihood opportunity elsewhere by expanding individual livelihood spaces across the Caribbean Sea. They thereby began to establish extra-island networks of potential labour destinations while at the same time resisting permanent commitments in any one direction except for periodically returning home. Migration and return has persisted as a widespread livelihood strategy among individuals of small Caribbean islands who continue to face economic and ecological uncertainties, conditions similar to those on St Kitts and Nevis at emancipation. Individual adaptability, not group behaviour, has always been important in migration and return in the Lesser Antilles.