The appropriation of the Phoenicians in British imperial ideology

The Phoenicians played ambivalent roles in Western historical imagination. One such role was as a valued predecessor and prototype for the industrial and maritime enterprise of nineteenth‐century imperial Britain. Explicit parallels were drawn in historical representations and more popular culture. It was widely believed that the Phoenicians had been present in Britain, especially in Cornwall, despite a lack of convincing historical evidence, and much importance was placed on supposed archaeological evidence. Ideological tensions arose from the need to reconcile ancient and modern Britain, and from the Semitic origin of the Phoenicians. This example shows the power of archaeological objects to provide material support for national and imperial constructions of the past.     

The Case of the Caldwell Mound: A Woodland Period Mound in the Central Scioto River Valley

ABSTRACT

This article presents a reconstruction and analysis of the Caldwell Mound located in the central Scioto River valley of southern Ohio. The mound contained a log tomb, at least four burials, and associated funerary objects. Four AMS radiocarbon dates place the Caldwell Mound within the last century BC and first century AD, and the mound contains evidence of practices historically associated with “Adena” and “Hopewell.” Few other records exist from this period in the region despite it experiencing perhaps some of the most dramatic socioreligious transformations in precolumbian North America. This analysis documents early evidence for the diversification and segregation of leadership roles based on the interpretation of three buried individuals. It also demonstrates the utility and efficacy of working with amateur-produced records and collections, even when incomplete, to reconstruct and glean insight from important Woodland period sites.     

TOWARDS UNIFICATION OF THE SOCIO‐ECOLOGICAL SCIENCES: THE VALUE OF COUPLED MODELS

The major environmental problems of the twenty‐first century, including climate change, water scarcity, pollution and resource exhaustion, represent a new category of crisis and highlight the desperate need for an integrated science of socio‐ecological phenomena. To help establish the foundations of such a science, we explore three traditions of mathematical theory: the Lotka–Volterra interactions of ecological theory, niche construction models of population genetics, and theory from the gene–culture coevolution tradition. We review the theoretical tools of each of these traditions in explaining cultural articulation with the environment. Although the theoretical core of the science we propose does not exist, cultural evolutionary theory supplies useful tools to analyse endogenous culture, cultural dynamics, and deeply rooted behavioural links to the environment. We also present a coupled model for demonstration, and suggest that coupled socio‐ecological models can provide a formal theory to help address the emergent socio‐ecological problems of the future.     

‘Are we wasting our time?’: bushfire practitioners and flammable futures in northern Australia

Humans are ‘fire creatures’ that have used fire for millennia to shape local environments to diverse purposes. Our capacity for combustion has also forced global climatic changes and rendered the planet increasingly flammable, creating the conditions for progressively higher impact bushfires now and into the future. Meanwhile, governments in fire-prone countries such as Australia have continued to allow settlements to be established (and re-established) in wildland–urban interfaces. Like other ‘natural hazards’, bushfire is thereby a social phenomenon bound up with human values, practices and decisions. But, while studies of the social dimensions of ‘natural hazards’ are steadily rising, this scholarship has rarely addressed natural hazard management practitioners directly, precisely those authorised and entrusted to intervene in the distribution of hazard probabilities and consequences. This paper seeks to help remediate this research gap, illustrating how cultural, ecological, economic and political factors thoroughly condition hazard management and modes of intervention. Drawing on a case study in the Northern Territory’s Greater Darwin region, this paper suggests not only that examining such sociocultural realities provides new insights into hazards and their distribution, but also that attention to such issues is crucial to understanding our flammable future in the Anthropocene.     

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.