Mapping Submerged Landscapes Using Multibeam Bathymetric Data: a case study from the north coast of Ireland

This paper outlines work currently being undertaken to reconstruct submerged archaeological landscapes off the north coast of Ireland. This research uses the recently‐completed Joint Irish Bathymetric Survey (JIBS), which has provided full‐coverage high‐resolution multibeam bathymetric data for the sea‐bed off the north coast. This data has been examined for evidence of past sea‐level change and been used to produce palaeo‐geographic reconstructions of the past landscape, which in turn have facilitated the identification of ten areas of high archaeological potential. The results presented here will form the basis of a future programme of archaeological survey and prospection. © 2010 The Authors     

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Abstract

The existence of sacred places is a widespread phenomenon throughout Palestine, one which is reflected in various types of local sites, such as water sources, graves, caves, trees and constructed shrines (maqams). In Islamic Palestine, the construction of maqams originated with the Fatimid (a Shiite group), in order to memorialise and 'greet' distinguished figures descended from the family of the prophet Muhammad. Thereafter, the Sunni faith actively adopted this concept and dedicated more than 2,500 sites to prophets, holy people, the righteous and martyrs. The sacred place of Sheikh Shihab ed-Din, like several hundred other Islamic maqams throughout Mandate Palestine, is located on top of a natural hill commanding a panoramic view. This place has held religious importance during the Byzantine and Ayyubid-Mamluk periods, right through to the present day. This paper studies the construction of the maqam as well as its related archaeological remains. It is based on a field study, a survey of the literature, and archaeological explorations conducted during a brief excavation season.     

Harvest Years? Reconfigurations of Empire in Jamaica, 1756–1807

At the end of the Seven Years' War, Jamaican planters were in an extremely strong position within the British Empire. Immensely wealthy, geopolitically important and constitutionally assertive, Jamaican planters used their strong position to win a series of political battles against colonial governors in the 1750s and 1760s. In doing so, they justified their self-asserted claims to being entitled to British rights and privileges. Nevertheless, contemporaneous developments in metropolitan thinking about empire and white people's place in empire undermined planters' fond estimation of their position within empire. British thinkers came to see British West Indians, especially during and after the American Revolution, not as fellow citizens but as imperial subjects. The result was a cultural and ideological crisis for Jamaican planters as abolitionism emerged as a powerful political force, in which their insistence that they were British and entitled to the rights and privileges of Britons was not accepted. Thus, white Jamaicans became the first in a long line of settler peoples of British descent to have their claims to Britishness denied by metropolitan opinion. This article thus contributes to a developing discussion about settler constitutional rights within the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British Empire.