1968: THE AMERICAN AND SCANDINAVIAN EXPERIENCES

This article compares and contrasts 1968 and many of the themes and events the late 1960s in the United States with those in Scandinavia. Along the way it examines similarities and differences in motivations, culture, ideology and politics that resulted in some similar and many different forms of social activism.     

Bias in Fish Bone Recovery from Differential Collection Techniques and Its Impact on Cultural Interpretation in California

ABSTRACT

While studies on recovery bias are numerous in the literature, the current research focuses on defining best practices in field collection techniques to provide a more accurate representative of site constituents, particularly fish remains. Methods to determine best practices included use of 1/4-inch, 1/8-inch, and 1/16-inch mesh to process excavated material from 10 × 10?cm and 40 × 40 cm-sized bulk column samples and from a 1 × 1 m test unit. Fish remains were compared to determine density and diversity differences between the samples and how these different data sets may impact cultural interpretations. This research shows that while collection of larger column samples processed using a smaller mesh size provides a more robust data set, the taxonomic richness present in a 1 × 1 m test unit provides complimentary data that are critical to understanding subsistence trends as a whole.     

Went the Day Well: Scripts,Glamour and Performance in War‐weekends

The recent growth of interest in heritage events has relied implicitly upon a modernist ontology in the way assumptions are made about the distinctiveness between visitor and performer identities. This article questions these assumptions through an analysis of the different groups of social actors attracted to war‐weekends organised through preserved steam railways. War‐weekends bring together in the same locality visitors, volunteers, performers, dressers‐up and re‐enactors sharing stories, enjoying the present and reflecting on the past—experiences in which each individual’s participation is enhanced. Although these and other ‘events’ are crucial to the continued existence of preserved railways in the UK they provide the participants with more than just a nostalgic trip back to the community spirit articulated through the so‐called ‘blitz mentality’ of the 1940s. They provide the opportunity for participants to engage both in the theatrical act of ‘being on’; of being observed by the ‘audience’ whilst at the same time acting as audience in the way they observe the other participants in the spectacle. The participants’ need to be observed is accomplished without the necessity of engaging in the rigorous training and audition processes associated with formal theatrical environments, whilst audience participation and interaction is not constrained by the usual formalities of traditional theatre.     

Caboonbah: The Archaeology of a Middle Class Queensland Pastoral Family

Pastoralism was the mainstay of the developing economy of Queensland. The men and women who owned the pastoral properties were mainly from upper and middle class English and Scottish families. One such family, the Somersets, occupied Caboonbah, a pastoral property in the Brisbane Valley of Queensland in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century. Excavation of the rubbish gully associated with the homestead provided material evidence of how this family adhered to the tenets of middle class family life while living in an isolated rural area and contending with the fluctuating fortunes of life on the land.     

Taphonomy and contextual zooarchaeology in urban deposits at York,UK

Zooarchaeological research on assemblages from deeply stratified sites in historic towns is complicated by the reworking of bones through intercutting and disturbance. Conversely, structural association with buildings and property boundaries may allow detailed spatial analysis, and interpretation at a close contextual level that reveal small details of people’s lives. Five years of excavation at the Hungate site in York has yielded a very large animal bone assemblage ranging from Roman to early modern times. Assessment of this assemblage has focussed on identifying context groups of good integrity and high research value. In this paper, we present preliminary results from Hungate to show the potential of contextual analysis in urban deposits, and the challenge presented by redeposition and time-averaging.     

Strongly aligned coastal boulders on Ko Larn island (Thailand): a proxy for past typhoon‐driven high‐energy wave events in the Bay of Bangkok

Recent studies of elevated carbonate boulder deposits on several rock islands near Bangkok have indicated that Thailand's capital city may not be as protected from typhoon strikes as previously thought. Here, new evidence is presented for past high‐energy wave (HEW) events in the form of statistically significant patterns of boulder alignment on exposed rocky shorelines of Ko Larn island. The long‐axis orientations of 193 coastal sandstone boulders were analysed across four study sites. Several scenarios for the unimodal, bimodal, and polymodal patterns found can be envisaged. Either the most recent HEW event was the strongest—in which case most clasts were rearranged unimodally (one observation site), or the strongest HEW event was earlier and subsequent weaker ones realigned only smaller boulders to produce bimodal or polymodal patterns (three observation sites). Inferred northeastward or eastward onshore flow directions are consistent with palaeo‐typhoons penetrating into the Bay of Bangkok on northwestward curving tracks. The calculated minimum flow velocities required to transport all sampled boulders are 5.5–7.8 m s^?1, similar to other findings throughout the Asia‐Pacific region. It was observed that the absence of a fitted boulder geomorphology lends credence to the earlier proposed time frame of 150–200 years between typhoon phases in the upper Gulf of Thailand. The current work has provided additional insights into the characteristics of past HEW events that have a possibility of reoccurring again at some time in the future. Our findings continue to raise awareness for a reassessment of the risks of coastal hazards for the Chao Phraya River delta and densely populated Bangkok, for which storm surge modelling should be an urgent priority, so as to give better perceptions on how typhoon‐driven marine incursion would impact the city.