Sediments exposed to high temperatures: reconstructing pyrotechnological processes in Late Bronze and Iron Age Strata at Tel Dor (Israel)

Many of the sediments analysed from Tel Dor (Israel) show structural alterations indicating that they were exposed to high temperatures. This observation is consistent with the abundant evidence for use of pyrotechnology from the earliest exposed Middle Bronze Age strata through the Roman period. Such structurally altered sediments may well represent one of the more widespread and durable records of pyrotechnology, and as such could be invaluable for reconstructing past human activities. The specific aims of this research are therefore to develop the means for identifying local sediments that were altered by different pyrotechnological activities and to elucidate the varying circumstances whereby sediments were exposed to high temperatures in a Late Bronze and Iron Age 1 section.     

J. C. Harrington Medal in Historical Archaeology: Martha A. Zierden

Historical Archaeology -     

The Labor of (Re)reading Plantation Landscapes Fungible(ly)

This article centers Saidiya Hartman's and Hortense Spillers' theorizations of Black fungibility as well as two speculative visual works in order to read Black bodies on plantation landscapes as symbols of transition, process, genderlessness and boundarylessness. I argue that reading Black bodies in this way breaks with the totalizing visual, conceptual and ontological regime of labor that tends to over determine Blackness within critical theories. Two visual fields help me with this counter read: William Gerrard De Brahm's 1757 “Map of South Carolina and a Part of Georgia”, as well as Julie Dash's 1991 images of the porous indigo‐stained hands of former slaves who worked indigo in the film Daughters of the Dust. While these two images oppose one another, their visual conventions enable a break with colonial and humanist scopic regimes like “Black labor” that tend to subsume multiple and intricate processes into the governing logic of labor.     

Mauna Kea: Two Cultures and the 'Imiloa Astronomy Center

When Snow wrote delivered his lecture on ‘The Two Cultures’ in 1959, he considered this to be a phenomenon that had British, Western and global significance. This article looks at how Snow's ideas play out in the setting of Hawai'i from the early contact with Western navigators through to current disputes over the building of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) atop Mauna Kea. ‘Mutual incomprehension’, identified by Snow as the chief characteristics of his two cultures are clearly seen to be at play in Western-Hawai'ian encounters.

This article places the TMT disputes in the setting of the Hawai'ian Renaissance, a movement that has gathered pace since the 1960s. It looks Gieryn's notions of ‘boundary work’ and that of Star and Griesemer on ‘boundary objects’ as ways of framing the discussion. The final focus of the article is the 'Imiloa Astronomy Center in Hilo as a ‘place of safe disagreement’.     

On the True Nature of the Contorniate Medals

The Archaeological Institute came into being in 1845 as a rival to the British Archaeological Association, itself founded 1843–44. Departing significantly from the contemporary traditions of established antiquarian societies, both held annual summer meetings thereafter. These introduced authoritative speakers, new discoveries and historical interpretations to a wider public, conference proceedings being published for a while in bespoke volumes. High-status congresses became but one element of an ongoing bitter competitive rivalry dividing the two bodies during their formative years. Preliminary examination of conference reports 1845–1850 offers some explanation as to why the societies were not easily to be reconciled. Both usefully lobbied for greater government responsibility in conservation, and for a better public understanding of the national past. Though neither readily accepted a Three Age System for pre-Roman Britain, both promoted scholarly standards for archaeology and architectural history. The 1850 Oxford meeting was the first purely archaeological congress held at an English University. Its success helped mark the Institute as the premier archaeological society of the day.     

Mountain anthropology and mountain anthropologists: The comparative study of populations at high elevations

Baker, Paul, and Corneille Jest, eds. L'Homme et Son Environnement à Haute Altitude: Environmental and Human Population Problems at High Altitude. Cahiers Népalais. Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1981. 163 pp. including plates and bibliography. n.p.

Cook, David Noble. The People of the Colca Valley: A Population Study. Dellplain Latin American Studies No. 9. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1982. xx+101 pp. including bibliography and index. $15.50 cloth.

Poffenberger, Mark. Patterns of Change in the Nepal Himalaya. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1980. v+116 pp. including maps, bibliography, and index. $20.00 cloth.

Millones, Luis, and Hiroyasu Tomoeda, eds. El Hombre y Su Ambiente en los Andes Centrales. Senri Ethnological Studies No. 10. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology, 1982. v + 307pp. including plates, maps, and bibliography, n.p.

Lehmann, David, ed. Ecology and Exchange in the Andes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. v + 245 pp. including bibliography, glossary, and subject and author indices. $47.50 cloth.

Skar, Harold A. The Warm Valley People: Duality and Land Reform among the Quechua Indians of Highland Peru. Oslo Studies in Social Anthropology No. 2. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1982. v + 350 pp. including plates, appendices, bibliography, index, and glossary. n.p.