Uniform Probability Density Analysis and Population History in the Northern Rio Grande

One of the basic challenges facing archaeology is translating surface evidence into population estimates with sufficient chronological resolution for demographic analysis. The problem is especially acute when one is working with sites inhabited across multiple chronological periods and the production curves for pottery types are unknown. In this paper, I present a Bayesian statistical method which I call uniform probability density analysis that is tailored to this situation. This method combines uniform distributions derived from the local pottery chronology with pottery assemblage data to reconstruct the population history of individual settlements. I also illustrate applications of this method at the site and regional level using data from Cuyamungue and the surrounding Tewa Basin/VEP II New Mexico project area. The results allow one to identify a period of significant population movement corresponding to the period of Tewa ethnogenesis in the thirteenth century CE.     

Analyzing Policy Networks Using Valued Exponential Random Graph Models: Do Government‐Sponsored Collaborative Groups Enhance Organizational Networks?

This paper examines collaborative management groups from the perspective of policymakers seeking to increase coordination within a policy network. While governments often support collaborative groups as a tool to address perceived network failures such as a lack of coordination, the net impact groups have is unclear. I use valued exponential random graph models (ERGMs) to model relationships of varying strength among a regional network of organizations involved in 57 collaborative groups. This provides a unique opportunity to study the interplay between numerous groups and organizations within a large‐scale network. Valued ERGMs are a recently developed extension of standard ERGMs that model valued instead of binary ties; thus, this paper also makes a methodological contribution to the policy literature. Findings suggest that participation in collaborative groups does motivate coordination and cooperation amongst individual network organizations; however, this effect is strongest for: (i) organizations that are not already members of another group and (ii) organizations that do not have a preexisting tie. These results support a transaction‐cost–based perspective of how government‐sponsored collaborative groups can influence network coordination; further, they also provide an empirical example of the Ecology of Games, in which multiple collaborative institutions have interactive effects on one another within a policy network.     

‘The greatest loss was a loss of our history’: natural disasters,marginalised identities and sites of memory

This paper examines intersections between space, materiality, memory and identity in relation to lesbian and gay experiences of recent disasters in Australia. Drawing on interviews with lesbians and gay men in two disaster sites, the paper argues that disaster impacts may include the loss of sites of memory that inform and underpin the formation and maintenance of marginalised identities. We explore the ways in which social marginality is experienced by sexual minorities during disasters as a result of threats to sites of lesbian and gay memory. The paper contributes to scholarship in geographies of memory by investigating the impacts of disasters on how memory is spatially located and experienced.     

A Mean and Random Past: The Implications of Variance for History

Abstract

Historians seeking to identify the Irish have overwhelmingly relied upon nominal record linkage, thus limiting studies to periods and contexts in which corroborating records exist. Surname analysis provides an alternative: a subset of 283 Irish surnames was able to correctly isolate 40 percent of known Irish individuals across thousands of entries, which is sufficient for sampling the Irish in demographic studies. This conclusion was based on an analysis of 278,949 names from the London area in the 1841 census, and was tested and refined against 42,248 historical records pertaining to the poor in London between 1777 and 1820.     

The Matter of Makira: Colonialism,Competition, and the Production of Gendered Peoples in Contemporary Solomon Islands and Medieval Britain

Since civil tension disrupted Solomon Islands between 1998 and 2003, the Arosi of Makira have elaborated discourses according to which their island contains a secret and preternaturally powerful subterranean army base. These discourses have clear antecedents in Maasina Rule, a post-World War II socio-political movement sometimes analysed as a “cargo cult”. Offering an alternative interpretation, I compare Arosi discourses about the Makiran underground to the Matter of Britain as represented in Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain (completed c. 1138). I argue that both sets of discourses arise from the dynamics of mutually precipitating communities mythologizing themselves and each other in terms of the analogous oppositions colonizer is to colonized as allochthon is to autochthon as male is to female. This comparison, I conclude, recommends the medieval European phenomenon of a “matter” as a productive model for understanding contemporary ethnogenetic myth-making in and beyond Melanesia.     

Paleodiet in northern Chile through the Holocene: extremely heavy δN values in dental calculus suggest a guano-derived signature?

Dental calculus extracted from the teeth of 28 prehistoric human skeletons from coastal and valley archaeological sites in northern Chile that date from the Archaic period (∼2300 BC) to the Late Intermediate period (AD 1476) was analyzed for stable isotope (δ¹⁵N, δ¹³C) compositions. δ¹⁵N compositions were extremely heavy (+17.8 to +33.1‰), but comparable to some studies using conventional human biomaterials (hair, nail, muscle) at other prehistoric sites in northern Chile. There was a negative correlation between δ¹⁵N and δ¹³C for coastal sites, but a positive correlation for valley sites. Results for the valley sites point to a diet that was influenced by marine resources throughout all time periods. The unusually heavy δ¹⁵N values for the coastal sites require a dietary component with a δ¹⁵N composition significantly heavier than that of marine resources. The hyper-aridity at the study area (mean annual rainfall of 0.5–0.6 mm/year) is a likely contributing factor to the production of heavy δ¹⁵N values, but is unlikely to account for the heaviest δ¹⁵N values (>+30‰). One possible explanation for the heaviest δ¹⁵N values is that dietary components were impacted by isotopically-heavy guano, which is abundant in the region. Guano may have been used as a fertilizer during crop cultivation at the onset of the Formative period, continuing through the Historic period after Spanish contact. The indirect impact of guano from abundant bird habitats in the region may have influenced wild foodstuffs harvested throughout the pre-agricultural period. Results provide support for the utility of dental calculus as a proxy for obtaining stable carbon and nitrogen isotope signatures for use in paleodietary studies.